


Til Death or Someone Better

by Mephistophelia



Category: Natasha Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 - Malloy
Genre: Anatole Is a Trash Human and I Love Him, Angst, Dolokhov Is Bad at Feelings, Dubious Consent, F/M, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Love Triangles, M/M, Maybe Incest?, POV Multiple, Sex, The One Where I Ship Anatole with Everyone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-22
Updated: 2017-11-19
Packaged: 2019-01-21 15:15:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 44,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12460410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mephistophelia/pseuds/Mephistophelia
Summary: Fedya never asked to love Anatole Kuragin. He never wanted to fall under the spell of this stupid arrogant prince, his body weak and breakable, his silver hair translucent and ridiculous. He hadn’t asked for this.All he could do was ruin Anatole's life, as Anatole had ruined his.





	1. Confrontation

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea why this fic ended up being so damn long. Probably because Dolokhov is an emotionally repressed disaster and Anatole is a walking trash fire and I just love them both so much.

Anatole Vasilyevich Kuragin had many fine qualities. He was handsome. Charming. Played a passable violin. Dressed well. Was outstanding in bed.

Subtlety, however. Subtlety he lacked.

Fedya Dolokhov, seated in the front row beside Hélène, twisted in his seat to look at him. He wasn’t alone in doing this. Half of Moscow had already turned their eyes away from the stage to watch Anatole swagger down the aisle of the opera, as the violins wailed from the orchestra in time with his steps. Fedya wondered how long he’d been pacing in the foyer, waiting for a suitably dramatic cry of strings to accompany his entrance. It could have been fifteen seconds. It could have been twenty minutes. Anatole wasn’t above it.

The reflected footlights caught Anatole’s white-blonde hair, gilding it the same silver as his coat. His slim and elegant body drew eyes like a sun. Anatole was an arrogant, ostentatious little thing, Fedya thought, but it was a pleasure to watch him move, even from a distance.

At least, it was, until Anatole paused, midway down the aisle, and glanced at someone in the crowd. His lips moved, and even though he couldn’t hear it, Fedya knew what Anatole had murmured to himself. He’d seen the words in Anatole’s eyes, in the bend of his body toward the woman seated in the box, in the smile playing at the corner of his mouth.

“ _Mais charmante_.”

It was a beat, nothing more. The slightest of pauses, and then Anatole swept down the rest of the aisle and took the vacant seat on Fedya’s left. Anatole had promised he would come, with such earnest sincerity that Fedya had no doubt he believed it. But what Anatole believed and what he did were seldom the same thing. Fortunately, thanks to Fedya’s reputation in Moscow, no one had dared take the seat beside him—even an hour into the opera, Anatole’s place waited for him.

Anatole leaned across Fedya to give his sister an affectionate kiss on the cheek. Fedya felt the warmth of Anatole’s shoulder against his chest. The amber of his cologne was intoxicating. Fedya closed his eyes, savoring it.

“Sweet sister,” Anatole murmured to Hélène. “What did I miss?”

“The first act,” Hélène said. “Honestly, Toto, why even come, at this point?”

“Your brother likes to make an entrance,” Fedya said.

“Only when I like the company, _mon petit ours_ ,” Anatole said. He nudged his knee against Fedya’s thigh, then kicked both feet up onto the orchestra screen in front of him.

Fedya flushed. _My little bear_. Any other man with the audacity to give Fyodor Dolokhov a nickname would have found himself challenged to a duel before sunrise. But Anatole could get away with it. Anatole could get away with anything. And Fedya liked the memory the absurd pet name conjured: a drunk evening in Petersburg, two years ago. Anatole had been twenty-one, reckless and thoughtless and just as handsome then as he was now. As best he remembered through the vodka haze, Fedya, looking for flashy ways to impress the young prince, had challenged a bear to a fight in Anatole’s drawing-room. How the bear had gotten there to begin with was unclear.

Shortly after that, Anatole had been sent to the Polish front as a low-level adjutant, and subsequently exiled to Moscow. Relations had always been terse between Anatole and his father, Prince Vasily. Fedya suspected the bear had not helped matters.

“Will you be silent, scoundrels?” hissed Anna Mikhailovna, from Hélène’s other side.

Anatole laughed and winked at the wrathful grande dame in the absurd headdress. Hélène struck him lightly on the back of the head with her fan, and he fell silent at last.

The opera was overblown trash, but they managed to feign interest in it. A scant five minutes later, the house lights came up, signaling intermission. He could have waited, Fedya thought, looking at Anatole with exasperation. He could have _waited_.

“Tolya, where—” he began.

But Anatole was not listening. He’d already stood up, as if no chair could contain his body for more than six minutes. He clapped Fedya on the shoulder and, without a word, paced back up the aisle. His destination was clear: his quick steps took him toward the stairs that led to a row of private boxes. Fedya watched him go, resentment growing by the second.

Hélène glanced at Fedya, sensing his irritation. “He’ll be back,” she said.

Maybe, Fedya thought. Hélène knew her brother better than anyone, but still, in that moment, he doubted her.

Of course, Hélène was right. Anatole returned just before the lights dimmed to begin the next act. He slipped into his seat as if he’d been there all along. Fedya couldn’t decide whether he should ask Anatole who he’d gone to see. He didn’t truly want to know, but the suspense of not knowing was worse.

“Where—” he began.

“I will not tell you to be silent a third time,” snapped Anna Mikhailovna.

Fedya flipped her an obscene gesture, to Hélène’s amusement, but went silent.

The rest of the performance seemed interminable. Fedya loathed the opera. He’d never understood what society people saw in this. No one could understand a word the actors were singing anyway. He was acutely aware of Anatole’s presence beside him, close enough to feel the heat of his body, so far away that Fedya had no idea what he was thinking.

At last, the house lights rose, and the crowd began to disperse, having had their fill of seeing and being seen. Hélène wrapped a shawl around her bare shoulders with a sigh.

“Will you come, Toto?” she asked. “Pierre was in a mood when I left him. You can always sort him out.”

Anatole shook his head and swept an arm around Fedya’s waist. His fingers skimmed between the trousers of Fedya’s uniform and the bare skin of his hip. Fedya shivered at the touch, then blushed and snaked out of Anatole’s arm. That stupid child, he had no notion of how to keep a secret. Did he want his sister to know?

“Prior engagement,” Anatole said, and laughed. “Next time, sweet sister. Shall we, Fedya?”

Fedya almost wanted to say no. See how Anatole liked being at another person’s beck and call. Thrown aside when it was inconvenient, picked up again when he was lonely or bored or had nothing else to do. But of course he couldn’t do that. He nodded, and he and Anatole left the opera for Fedya’s apartment, on the seedy side of Moscow.

Fedya unlocked the door, fumbling in the dark for the key. The room was nothing special, certainly not compared to the house where Anatole lived in Moscow. Broke and exiled from Petersburg, Anatole had moved in with his sister and her boring scholar husband Pierre Bezukhov, in an elegant two-story home near the Metropole. But Fedya’s room, however shabby in comparison, was private, which for Anatole and Fedya was generally enough. Fedya closed the door behind him as Anatole eased out of his coat, tossing it over a chair. In his shirtsleeves and slim black waistcoat, he looked even more ethereal and beautiful, pale and narrow and delicate.

“How did you like the performance?” Anatole asked.

Fedya scowled. He didn’t give a damn about the performance. The only reason he’d gone at all was for Anatole. And the arrogant brainless prince had arrived an hour and a half late, then spent half the opera creeping through the private boxes, looking for God knew what.

“Charming,” Fedya said, in what was admittedly a terrible impression of Anatole’s voice.

Anatole missed the dig entirely. “I agree,” he said. “Did you see Natalya Rostova in the box? I didn’t know she was in from the country. My God, she’s grown beautiful.”

Damn him, Fedya thought, flashing back to the crowd, remembering. Countess Natalya. Of course. Where else would he have gone? Anatole, with the libido of a rabbit and the concentration of a goldfish. A pretty young girl entering society for the first time, how could he help himself?

But he could have helped himself. Anatole had Fedya. He didn’t need that chit of a girl.

“And so natural, so pleasant,” Anatole said. He leaned against the bedpost, his long body relaxed and thoughtful. “Extraordinary. Enchanting. Have you met her?” His eyes looked at Fedya, but he was seeing something else. The face of a young woman, her eyes glittering, her neck and shoulders bare.

Damn him, the selfish, immature, stupid child.

Without thinking, but not without enjoyment, Fedya slapped Anatole across the cheek as hard as he could.

He’d expected Anatole to cry out, for tears to well in his handsome eyes. But Anatole hardly even seemed surprised. His breath hitched in his throat, and his head turned with the blow, but his silence never wavered. A raw, red flush rose on Anatole’s pale cheek. He took it like a man who had been hit before, and harder than that. But if the stupid little peacock thought taking a blow well would soften Fedya’s anger, he was in for a surprise.

“Fuck you,” Fedya said. “Natalya Rostova. You stupid child. Don’t you think?”

“Fedya,” Anatole began.

Fedya was not interested in being reasoned with. He was slightly drunk and deeply betrayed, which made him crueller than he meant to be. His next blow caught Anatole in the same place, but with a fist instead of an open hand.

Anatole hadn’t tried to defend himself. He staggered back, catching himself on the bed. Fedya hated how much more attractive Anatole looked when he was afraid. It so rarely happened. Anatole wasn’t smart enough to be properly afraid, Fedya thought. His tall, lean body looked laughably fragile. Fedya could have broken his arm in half if he’d wanted to.

He wanted to.

“Come now, this is stupid,” Anatole began.

“Do you love me at all, Kuragin?” Fedya interrupted. To his disgust, his voice broke over Anatole’s name.

Anatole looked at him silently. The fear had vanished from his eyes, short-lived as everything else in his life. Fedya’s fist had broken the skin, and a small blur of blood marred Anatole’s cheek. “Give me a reason to,” he murmured.

Seducing him. Fedya had just hit Anatole as hard as he could, he had Tolya’s blood on his knuckles, and the peacock was using that as an excuse to seduce him. In control, even now.

Fedya snarled. He hadn’t asked for this. Had never wanted to fall under the spell of this stupid arrogant prince, his body weak and breakable, his silver hair translucent and ridiculous. This alluring selfish child who never made anything easy, who cared for no one but himself and his own happiness. Fedya hadn’t asked for this. All he could do was make Anatole feel as confused and helpless as he did.

That part, at least, was simple.

Fedya moved fast. He was stronger than Anatole, and the war had taught him to take what he wanted. He stripped Anatole of his clothes with the same cruel precision he used to field-strip a revolver, fast and rough and violent. Anatole didn’t protest. He was too busy with the buttons of Fedya’s uniform to push back against anything. Anatole had seen this wildness in Fedya before, knew the kind of ecstatic conclusion it could lead to. Or at least, he thought he knew. Even Fedya wasn’t quite sure where this was headed, but he knew it was nowhere they’d gone before.

In a moment, Anatole was naked in front of Fedya, who took one look at the spotless, faultless body in front of him and groaned in both want and loathing. Anatole had already relieved Fedya of his military jacket. Fedya tore off his own shirt and shoved Anatole in both shoulders. Anatole landed flat backward on the bed with a small, surprised sound.

An “oh.” Almost enunciated.

It was the sound, more than anything, that did it. Such a naïve, innocent little sound, for someone who’d fucked as widely and as well as Anatole had. Until then, Fedya had been torn between kissing him and killing him. Now, he knew what he wanted.

Anatole moaned as Fedya’s kiss tore into his neck like a wolf. More possession than kiss. Staking a claim. Fedya fumbled with his own trousers, edging them down near his knees—that was enough, he wasn’t in this for aesthetics. He yanked Anatole forward and forced his lean thighs apart. Anatole wrapped his legs around Fedya’s hips, agreeing. Directing. Even now, with Fedya pinning him to the bed, dictating every movement.

“I hate you,” Fedya said, and thrust into him hard.

Anatole yelped. He had a right to be surprised—if indeed that had been a noise of surprise. Usually Fedya was slow, tender, so much so that Anatole would laugh and ask if Fedya thought a sharp thrust would break him. Fedya wanted to break him now.

Fedya had disconnected from himself. It was fast, brutal, mechanical. He let the anger swell through him and fog his mind. In the corners of the room, he smelled smoke.

Anatole had gone very still and very silent. He pressed his eyes tight closed. A small sound escaped his lips in time with Fedya’s thrusts, almost a whimper. It reminded Fedya of an aide-de-camp he had seen at Austerlitz, his leg blasted off at the hip, left to bleed out in the snow. The way the boy had whimpered, high and keening, like a maimed dog. Fedya had laughed at the sound, nervous and wild, and didn’t understand why. When Fedya came, he tasted blood in his mouth.

He shoved Anatole away, spent and panting. His mind whirred through a postcoital fog as thick as drunkenness, as though he had fucked Anatole while half-asleep. Had he just done that? Why had he done it? Why had he felt such a need to hurt him, and why had hurting him felt so good? He forced himself to look over, though shame would have kept his eyes anywhere else. Anatole lay on his back, breathing hard, eyes closed. Fedya could see bruises rising where he’d dug his hands into Anatole’s hips. A dark shadow rose along his throat where Fedya’s lips had marked him.

He’d wanted to mar Anatole’s perfection. Now that he’d done it, it felt like plucking the feathers off an angel.

Quietly, he ran one hand through Anatole’s hair. Tired, silent, Anatole didn’t move or open his eyes. Until Fedya moved to lay a kiss between Anatole’s hipbones, barely a brush. Anatole’s whole body tensed. He was making a visible effort to keep quiet. Fedya’s neighbors, in this part of Moscow, were more accustomed to sounds of pain than of pleasure. But Fedya knew too well how to work Anatole, as he slid lower and took the prince in his mouth.

He knew how to make him sing.

It took maybe two minutes. This had always been Anatole’s particular area of expertise, but Fedya’s tongue and lips knew the maneuvers as well as any. When Anatole came, it was with a wail the neighbors must have heard.

Fedya lay beside Anatole, whose eyes were still closed, a smile at the corner of his mouth. He leaned his head against Anatole’s shoulder, both damp with a sheen of sweat.

“What a pair we make, _mon cher_ ,” Anatole said, his voice rough with the ghost of orgasm.

Fedya had to admit this was true.

They lay there a moment, side by side and distant, not speaking. Fedya propped himself up on one elbow and stroked the bruise on Anatole’s cheek with two fingers. How had he dared? It felt like sacrilege. But when rage filled him, God seemed less important. Anatole shivered at his touch, but didn’t pull away.

“You were used to that,” Fedya said. “Being hit.” It wasn’t quite the question he wanted answered. _Who else tried to own you with his fists?_ Anatole owed him at least that much. At least a name.

Anatole laughed, a careless laugh that felt in keeping with his personality and out of step with the situation. “Yes,” he said. “Though Papa never followed it up quite the way you did.”

It was plain he wanted the conversation to end there, but Fedya felt too shaken to let silence descend over them. It might have been the worst possible thing to talk about, but anything was better than silence. Besides, it was a revelation, and one he did not like. The idea that there was something he didn’t know about going on in Anatole’s head, that this preening peacock with a brain the size of a walnut was hiding things from him, unnerved Fedya. The idea that, even for a moment, Fedya had reminded him of his father.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked.

Anatole sat up and looked at Fedya as though he were the stupidest man in Moscow. It was curious, to see that look going in the other direction. “Why?” he said. “Would it have changed anything?”

It would have changed more than Anatole thought. Knowing now, after the fact, made Fedya loathe himself. He wanted to take it back, to show Anatole that love wasn’t a choice between shallowness and brutality. That it could exist in another space, passion without pain, honesty without hatred. And what had he done? Tried to frighten Anatole into loving him. Wanted him so deeply he refused to share him, and would take him by force if he couldn’t have him by love. Because he couldn’t. Not when someone as unimportant as Natasha Rostova could sit still and smile and take Anatole from Fedya. Fedya’s love wasn’t enough to fight that. He’d hoped his hate might be.

Anatole ran a hand through his hair—which only enhanced its state of disaster—and stood up. His naked body glowed in the moonlight. He bent to pick up his trousers, seeming not to feel Fedya’s eyes on him. Or, if he did feel them, enjoying that feeling. There wasn’t a man alive as comfortable in his own nudity as Anatole Kuragin. His aura of casual grace was not lessened by the bruises. If anything, Fedya felt it more strongly.

“I should get home,” Anatole said. “My sister and Pierre will wonder.”

They wouldn’t wonder. Hélène Bezukhova could have counted on one hand the times Anatole had come home that month, and Fedya knew it. But the lie was easier on both of them than the truth. Fedya didn’t know if he could bear Anatole saying _I can’t stay here tonight because you frighten me._

“Won’t he ask about,” Fedya began, sheepish.

“This?” Anatole asked, gesturing to his face. He laughed like Fedya had told a clever joke. “ _Mon cher,_ do you really think Pierre will be surprised someone punched me in the face?”


	2. Recognition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Two: In which Anatole realizes that complicated Russian romances may be a family trait.

The walk from Dolokhov’s to Hélène’s made Anatole miss Petersburg all over again. Moscow felt alien at night. Too formal. Too quiet. Colder. It was past one in the morning, but in Petersburg there would have been people at this hour, laughter, music, light spilling into the streets. Moscow went dead at sundown. He hated it. When winter lasted six months, any city worth the name should have known how to compensate.

He’d thought he would get used to it. And in a way, he had. Anatole had arrived in Moscow with nothing, but he’d started to build a life here. He had Hélène, who was a whole world wrapped into one body. He had Pierre, who at least was company. He had Balaga and Katya and Matryosha and the rest from Matreshka’s—a reckless crowd of Romani wanderers who welcomed Anatole like a brother and never asked anything of him other than love and the occasional tip.

He had Dolokhov. Without Fedya, Moscow would have been dark and lonely and brutal. Without Fedya, Moscow would have been simpler.

And then there was the countess. Natalya Rostova. He smiled, despite everything, thinking of the way Natalie had blushed when he spoke, the way she shivered when he touched her arm on his way out of her box. With the memory of her dark, glittering eyes, the dull Moscow night seemed less cold.

Anatole let himself into the house, which at this hour was largely dark. A single light shone from the end of the hall, emanating from the kitchen. Anatole stepped out of his boots—leaving them dripping on the wood, which really wasn’t much better—and followed the light.

Sitting at the kitchen table, Hélène looked up when he entered. She hadn’t undone the elegant hairstyle she’d worn to the opera, though it looked absurd against her royal blue housecoat. A bottle of vodka stood open on the table in front of her. He could see from the pink tint to her eyes that she’d been crying. She took him in, shivering and shoeless, and gestured for him to join her. He sat near her, close enough for his knee to brush her thigh. She looked younger that night, despite the vodka. _Pierre was in a mood when I left him,_ she’d said. Suddenly, Anatole regretted not listening. He should have come back. Certainly going with Fedya had helped neither of them.

“I didn’t expect you back,” she said, and wiped the side of her hand beneath her eyes, brushing away tears. Her voice gave no sign that she’d been crying. She wanted to pretend nothing was wrong. He would oblige her.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Am I interrupting a romantic interlude with your beloved husband? I can come back later.”

Hélène took a long drink of vodka, then gave Anatole a withering look from over the bottle. “Shut up,” she said.

This only made Anatole laugh. “Lena, he’s harmless,” he said. “A prickly old crank, eh? Let him be.”

Hélène scowled. “You don’t know him,” she said. “He’s vile. And boring, Toto. Your left elbow is more interesting than Pierre’s whole body.”

Anatole looked at his elbow experimentally. “It is fascinating, I’ll admit,” he said.

Hélène rolled her eyes and jostled his leg with hers. “You see? You’re a fool, but you’re an entertaining fool,” she said. “Will you come to church with us tomorrow? Pierre would like it, and I don’t want to go alone with him.”

Anatole hadn’t been to church in six months. It seemed pointless, inauthentic, and dead boring. The sort of thing that horrid mouse Mary Bolkonskaya would like. But he would oblige his sister in anything that wasn’t terribly inconvenient. Payment, in its way. For the childhood nights Hélène let Anatole sleep in her room after Papa beat him for being too loud, too freewheeling, too much himself. Or the thousands of times she’d gently teased him and listened to him and paid attention to him when no one else would. Or for letting him stay here, with her, after he’d been thrown out of Petersburg as a profligate. His childhood with Hélène had been lonely. Without her, it would have been unbearable. He’d defended her from their father’s rage as best he could, but the debt was not nearly paid. A morning in church separating his sister from Pierre Bezukhov seemed a simple enough way to signal his devotion to her.

He slid out of his coat and slung it over the chair, comfortable now in shirtsleeves and his waistcoat. The heat of the kitchen had at last sunk into his bones. “All right,” he said.

Hélène smiled. “Good,” she said. “Bathe before then. You smell like sex and Dolokhov.”

Anatole was startled into laughter. Another woman might have hesitated to remark that her younger brother stumbled home flushed and breathless, trailing the cloud of an infantry captain’s cologne, but Hélène had never been much like other women.

“Out of curiosity,” Hélène added, as Anatole coaxed the bottle from her and took a drink, “did those things come separately, or together?”

Anatole shrugged. “Well,” he said. “Fedya came first. But I wasn’t far behind.”

Hélène groaned and pushed a stray lock of hair from her forehead. Her disapproval wasn’t because Anatole fucked both men and women. That was old news. Three years ago, she’d opened a broom closet in the Kuragins’ Petersburg home and found Anatole on his knees, his lips and tongue teasing the cock of their handsome footman Mikhail. He’d seen her raise one eyebrow, calm as ever, then close the door again. She never said another word to him about it. No, Hélène was exasperated now for a different reason. Anatole didn’t know why, but was quite certain she would tell him.

Perhaps she carried a candle for Fedya herself. She had plenty of reason to. Fedya was dark and strong and handsome and interesting. He’d killed the shah’s brother while Pierre sat at home with his spectacles on his nose, reading the Kabbalah. She was within her rights to try something, though Anatole doubted Fedya would be interested.

“Toto, why do you make things difficult for yourself?” she asked. “It won’t end well between you and Fedya. I can tell.”

“There’s no harm in it,” Anatole said.

Hélène shook her head. “It looks like there was a little harm,” she said. She reached out a hand and brushed her fingers along the tender skin of Anatole’s cheek, still flushed and darker where Fedya’s knuckles had caught him.

He flinched. It hurt worse than he’d shown Fedya. He’d pushed that down and away, as he’d always done, pain being a trivial and personal thing you were meant to nurse in private. But with Hélène’s gentle touch, his reserve shattered. Anatole felt thirteen years old again, crying into Hélène’s shoulder after Papa broke his arm for kissing Mitya, the housekeeper’s son, in the servants’ stairway. He hated it. He was not that child anymore. He was twenty-three years old, he had an infantry captain for a lover, he’d fallen for a beautiful young woman at the opera, and he was happy. He repeated this again to himself, more firmly the second time.

Fedya had frightened him. Not the punch, Anatole had been hit too many times to fear that. The sex. The way Fedya had fucked him like an object. Like something to control and own and silence. Anatole had wanted Fedya to fuck him, wanted it badly in fact. But if he hadn’t, he wasn’t sure Fedya would have stopped.

Hélène was still watching him. Anatole realized he should have said something long ago.

“He didn’t mean it,” he said, and gave a shrug undercut by the pause preceding it.

Something shifted beneath Hélène’s expression. She took Anatole’s hand in hers and pressed it. For a moment, Anatole was afraid he would cry. “Men always say they don’t mean it,” she said. “But they always do.”

He looked down at his hands. He didn’t have room for these thoughts right now, and so he simply would not think them. Not about Pierre, not about Papa, not about Dolokhov. Instead, he took the bottle from Hélène and drank deep. She didn’t protest the waste of her vodka, seeing how much he needed it.

“He didn’t mean it,” Anatole repeated, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “He was drunk. All I did was ask him about Natalie, there was no reason to—what?”

Anatole broke off with a scowl, for Hélène had thrown back her head and laughed so loudly Anatole was certain she’d wake Pierre. For his part, Anatole couldn’t see anything funny about this. But Hélène laughed, at least another full minute. At last mastering herself, she wiped her eyes and looked at Anatole in disbelief.

“Oh, Toto,” she said. “You really don’t know, do you?”

Anatole’s scowl deepened. “Don’t know what?”

“How do you get dressed without me to tell you which shoe goes on what foot?” Hélène asked.

Anatole started to rise. He would not be treated like a child. Not by his father, not by Pierre, not by Fedya, and certainly not by Hélène, who knew him better than anyone and knew he wasn’t stupid, she knew that. “If you have something to say, sister—”

“He’s jealous, Toto,” Hélène said patiently.

This stopped Anatole dead. He sat back in his chair, looking stunned at Hélène. “He’s what?”

Hélène rolled her eyes. “Jealous,” she repeated. “It’s an emotion normal people have. That doesn’t excuse him, he’s still a brute, but honestly, how could you not know?”

Anatole shook his head. Hélène wasn’t making sense. Fedya couldn’t be jealous. There wasn’t anything between them to warrant jealousy. Fedya teased Anatole endlessly about the affairs he carried on with the Romani girls at Matreshka’s, the expensive gifts he bought for Matryosha, the time he’d drunkenly proposed to Katya and she’d doused his head in the rain barrel. And Anatole knew for a fact that Fedya went to the brothels on Komenka Boulevard at least weekly, where he got his pick of slender young men with naïve smiles eager to go a round with Dolokhov the Assassin. Anatole was only another one of those men to him. His favorite, maybe—and Anatole had tried most of what the Komenka brothels had on offer, honestly Anatole ought to be Fedya’s favorite—but still in their category. You couldn’t be jealous of someone you only slept with when it was convenient. And all Anatole had done so far was make conversation with Natalie…

That goddess. That absolute beauty. The woman who made every other woman Anatole had ever seen pale into the faint shadow of perfection. He thought again of Natalie’s wide glittering eyes in the opera box, rapt and enchanted, enchanting. _Charmante, tellement charmante._ Though he had other things to think of, he found his mind drifting to her, luxuriating over her, concocting increasingly elaborate plans to see her again. Could he climb up to her window that night, he wondered, or would Marya Dmitrievna have him disemboweled for the attempt? It might be worth it either way.

Hélène smirked, sensing the direction his thoughts had gone. “The girl has you bewitched, dear brother,” she said. “You haven’t been this taken with one of your pretty toys since Dolokhov. Remember how you mooned over him in Petersburg?”

Anatole folded his arms—he’d have blushed, if he were a different sort of person. “I did not moon,” he said pertly.

He had mooned, of course. Slunk around the house like a sexually frustrated ghost, sighing and moping. Daydreaming about the beautiful infantry captain in his sharp uniform, dark-haired and muscular, with his fine mouth and his body like a sculpted Hercules. He had even written poetry, God help him. But he would never admit that to Hélène.

“I can’t help that she’s bewitching,” he said. “It’s his fault he’s jealous, not mine.”

Hélène smiled, though this one seemed sadder than before. She leaned over and kissed him on the forehead. Under normal circumstances, he would have resented this—he was only two years younger than his sister, after all—but tonight he found it touching, understanding what she meant by it.

“Of course it’s not your fault,” Hélène said. “But you have to play the game. Make him feel special. Wanted. Make him think he’s the only man in the world. Because you have to keep yourself safe. And you'll be safest when he’s happy.”

They sat in silence a long moment. One minute turned to five. Anatole and Hélène had never seen one another more clearly. Anatole was not at all certain he liked being seen.

Finally, Hélène broke the silence. “Either go to bed, Toto, or drink with me. I won’t sleep tonight, and I don’t plan to stay awake sober.”

Anatole smiled. He had drunk a great deal before the opera, but that warm glow had long since faded, and he’d seldom been more in need of liquor. He held out his hand, and Hélène placed the bottle in his palm with an air of ceremony.

He toasted Hélène with the whole bottle, vodka sloshing against the glass two inches lower than it had when he’d come in. “To love,” he said ironically, and drank.

He barely remembered what they spoke of after that. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that they were speaking, and everything was easy. Hélène laughed, loud and careless, and it gratified Anatole, because he knew full well that no one could make Hélène laugh like he could. The vodka warmed him, blunted the edges of his thoughts.

Anatole knew Fedya thought he was stupid. Fedya made no attempt to hide it—or if he did, he was the worst liar Anatole had ever met. In Fedya’s view, anyone who was happy couldn’t be thinking hard enough, couldn’t be paying attention. A shortsighted opinion, really. Anatole thought more carefully than Fedya, and more discriminatingly, only about things that pleased him. Happiness wasn’t a failing. It was an ability to sort, to compartmentalize. It was a conscious decision, and the only one worth making.

As the night wore into morning, Anatole didn’t have to remind himself to be happy. He simply was.


	3. Suspicion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which all Pierre really wants is a cup of coffee.

Sunday morning, Pierre awoke early. The house felt deserted. Certainly the opposite side of the bed was, though he’d only half-expected to find Hélène there. He sighed and pulled on his dressing-gown, fumbling a moment with the sleeves. At least he could make himself a pot of coffee before church. Assuming his wife came home from wherever she had gone by then. He did not mean to go alone. Moscow talked enough as it was. They didn’t need another reason to think Pierre couldn’t manage his wife.

Even if that was true.

Had he known the kind of degeneracy that would enter his house along with Hélène Vasilyevna, he thought, he’d have second-guessed this marriage. Yes, she was beautiful, and on paper the thing seemed splendid. But paper was one thing. Reality found Pierre skirting the halls like a guest in his own home, dreading the moment when he stumbled on his wife and had to speak to her. Or, these days, to her brother.

Anatole Kuragin had his moments, of course. He was a pleasant fellow—ought to be, as taking pleasure and being pleasant were his joint purposes in life. But Pierre had never agreed to let the boy into his guest room, much less move in with no indication of ever leaving. Had he known what Prince Vasily was planning, Pierre would have locked the windows, bolted the doors, and pretended not to be at home for a month. Of course, Pierre’s father-in-law had given no warning. The man had thrown his disreputable son on the first train to Moscow, and the boy turned up on Pierre’s steps the next day. A single carpetbag in his hand, wearing a ridiculous aquamarine coat with brown leather patches on the elbows, bleached hair crowning his head like a cockatoo.

A harmless dandy, Pierre had thought at first. Though lately, he had begun to wonder.

Particularly given the scene he walked in on as he entered the kitchen.

They lay there together, their sleeping faces bathed in the pale light of early morning. An empty bottle of vodka lay on the floor beside them. Hélène, hair still in the remnants of its style from the night before, slept with her back against the table leg, her head drooping onto one shoulder. Her lashes were immeasurably long, her breathing soft and regular. She wore the blue housecoat Pierre had bought her as a birthday gift.

Anatole lay on the kitchen floor, curled on his side like a cat, with his head in his sister’s lap. He was still dressed for the opera in a well-cut black waistcoat and narrow trousers, the satin stripe down the side emphasizing the length and leanness of his legs. Anatole’s white-blonde hair, in that ostentatious cut, looked almost silver against the blue fabric of Hélène’s housecoat. The faint remains of a bruise colored his throat and the plane of his left cheek. Pierre couldn’t muster up surprise at the notion that someone had hit the boy. Sympathy was equally difficult to come by.

Pierre made no sound at first, merely looking at his wife and brother-in-law entwined and asleep on the kitchen floor. It had Kuragin written all over it, he thought. Beautiful and obscene. They might have looked like a Renaissance sculpture if the underlying current hadn’t been so revolting.

After what he’d said to her last night, after what he'd accused her of, he wondered if Hélène hadn’t staged this. It wasn’t beneath her. Very little was.

Pierre cleared his throat. Hélène’s eyes opened, and in a moment she was fully alert. She met his eyes boldly and without apology, as if she had nothing to apologize for. Without breaking Pierre’s gaze, she gently shook Anatole’s shoulder, jostling him awake.

Anatole sat up and arched his slender back like he’d woken up in his own bed. Then, he turned a warm, guileless smile on Pierre. Not for the first time, Pierre wondered if Anatole were an idiot, the world’s best liar, or both.

“Pierre, old man,” Anatole said brightly, and stood. “Early riser, that’s admirable. You slept well, I hope, _mon cher_?”

“Very well,” Pierre said, tight-lipped.

“Excellent,” Anatole said. He wove behind Pierre to snatch his coat from the chair, that gaudy steel-gray number that made him look vaguely otherworldly. “All that studying, you’ve earned it. Give the old brain some rest, eh? Terrible shame you missed the opera. Marya Dmitrievna asked after you.”

Pierre was in no doubt that Anatole could have rattled off a string of idle nonsense for the next thirty minutes if unchecked. Though perhaps not so idle as all that, he thought. Hélène, taking advantage of Pierre’s distraction, had left the room to dress. Anatole must have diverted Pierre’s attention on purpose. Giving his sister an escape, sensing the tension between husband and wife. They did seem to read one another’s thoughts, the Kuragins. And yet Pierre could never tell what either of them was thinking.

“You’ll join Hélène and me for church?” Pierre asked, somewhat stiffly.

He regretted the invitation almost immediately. He didn’t want to be alone with Hélène at church, but bringing Anatole along was, if anything, worse. Given the vulgarity he’d discovered in his own kitchen. But it was too late. Besides, he could not go to church without his wife, and he already knew his wife would not go without her brother.

Anatole grinned and tossed the coat over his arm, like a towel over the arm of a waiter. He pushed the other hand through his hair, ruffling it to the perfect cocky height. It was incredible. Anyone would have thought he’d spent the past hour getting ready, not sleeping drunk on Pierre’s kitchen floor.

“ _Bien sur_ ,” he said. “I think we could all use some salvation this morning, don’t you?”

Though he did not say so, Pierre agreed.

An hour later, they piled into a carriage and set off for St. Peter’s on the opposite side of the river. Anatole had washed and changed into something more appropriate to commune with the Lord in, though his vibrant green jacket still contrived to be more suggestive than anything Pierre had ever dared to put on. Hélène sat beside her brother and did not look at Pierre. After their argument the night before, Pierre didn’t want to look at her either.

He forced himself, instead, to look at Anatole. The boy had reached over to Hélène’s lap and held her hand, tracing a circle in the space between her forefinger and thumb. Flirtatious, Pierre thought for a moment, sickened. Right in front of him. Flaunting it. Then, he realized: reassuring. Hélène’s hand shook, and Anatole’s steadied it. She was afraid. Afraid of Pierre. And Anatole had known that before he did.

Anatole watched Pierre with those large, childlike eyes. Accusing him, without saying a word. The accusation did not seem sharp enough, given what he'd said. Pierre wondered if Hélène had told her brother the substance of his accusations last night, or if she’d left him to form his own conclusions. He looked back to his own hands, which seemed too large, monstrous, compared to Anatole’s.

Damn him, he thought, without wholly understanding why.

The moment the carriage stopped, Pierre stepped out into the cobbled square in front of the church, the Kuragins following behind. They had almost reached the door when a fine voice made all three turn.

“Anatole.”

Pierre thought for a moment he saw Anatole flinch. But that was ridiculous, because when he saw who it was, Anatole smiled and nodded in recognition. A broad-shouldered, clean-shaven man of medium height, thick dark hair and sharp eyes, wearing the epaulettes of an infantry captain. Fedya Dolokhov, that reckless young rake, his skill with a pistol unmatched in Moscow. Pierre had met him a year or two before, in Petersburg. A bear had been involved, he vaguely recalled.

And then Pierre had shot him.

He blushed like a child, remembering, and looked away.

But Dolokhov had no eyes for Pierre. “Anatole, I need to speak with you,” he said. He looked terrible, Pierre thought. His uniform had been slept in, and his eyes were red-rimmed in a way that suggested crying but in this case was almost certainly a hangover.

Pierre was about to tell Anatole to go—here was clearly a friend in distress, that was religion in practice if not in form—when Anatole spoke.

“Find me after, Fedya,” he said. “I won’t be an hour.”

“Anatole,” Hélène said sharply, as if this had disobeyed some order she’d given.

But Anatole merely pressed her hand in his, once, and turned to walk into the church. He moved with a swagger that was almost sacrilegious, as if he were striding down the aisle of the opera and not into the nave of St. Peter’s. Dolokhov stared after him as if enchanted, watching every flicker of movement through Anatole's body. He looked as if he tried to see through Anatole's clothes to the bones, the muscle, the soul beneath.

He looked angry enough to shoot.

Pierre looked at Dolokhov, then turned to Hélène. “Come,” he said, and took her by the arm. To his surprise, she didn’t resent his touch. Hélène must have been unnerved by something in the encounter, for her to bear his presence without her usual degree of exasperation and disdain. Pierre didn’t know what it was, and knew he wouldn’t ask.

But it was nice, he thought, to walk into a church with your wife on your arm, and her brother a respectable distance away, like any normal man could do.


	4. Sanctification

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Natasha deeply misunderstands the point of going to church.

Natasha had never been in a cathedral as beautiful as St. Peter’s. She had never been in a cathedral at all. The church she and Sonya and Nikolai went to in the country was simple. Charming, but nothing about it would take your breath away. Here, she found herself craning her neck to look at the gate of glittering icons behind the sanctuary, the frescoed dome overhead where the kind, wise face of Christ looked down on her with the faintest of smiles. This was where God should be worshipped, she thought. Surrounded by so much beauty, everything felt holy. Everything felt sacred.

Marya Dmitrievna pulled her along by the hand toward their pew. “Stop dawdling,” she whispered. “You can look from your seat.”

Abashed, Natasha hurried to sit between Marya and Sonya. Marya took Sundays seriously, and Natasha had awoken late and then spent too much time on her hair, which put her godmother in a terse mood. But even after such a short time in Moscow, Natasha knew the importance of looking your best before you left the house. After all, Moscow was a thriving city, full of interesting people. Who knew who you might see.

Who knew who might see you.

A flash passed through her mind, a vision of Andrey, but she pushed that away. She had not tried to explain this to anyone, not even to Sonya. Andrey had not become any less handsome since last night, no less kind, still as good of a match. But she had begun to remember him, not differently, but better. She remembered the coldness that could fill his gray eyes, the frost over his smile. She remembered the polite distance of his touch when they danced at the Naryshkins’ ball the year before. She remembered the way he seemed to listen to what went on behind and beneath her words. Listening to his own thoughts, not what she said.

Andrey was handsome. Young. Rich. Arguably the finest match in Russia. But he was gone, a hundred miles away, and it was no good thinking about things that would not change.

Better to think about the people who were here, she decided, as she pushed Andrey’s memory aside and glanced at the faces in the pews opposite her. Most of the church was already full, their faces as strange and beautiful as the portraits of saints. Dear Pierre Bezukhov, that sad pleasant old man, caught her eye and smiled. She returned it warmly. She always liked Pierre, who was so very kind, even if he was a little stout and wore those queer rumpled waistcoats. And near him, that elegant Hélène, his wife, who wore satin and pearls to the cathedral as if God himself might ask her for a dance. And between them—

Natasha gripped her own hand in her lap.

Oh, she thought, looking at Anatole.

Oh, heaven.

The saints no longer looked as beautiful as they had before. The gilt of the iconostasis seemed to exist simply to reflect gold onto Anatole’s face. Through the window, morning sunlight rained down through the nave, catching his hair until it glittered like stars. And his eyes were locked on her, just as hers were on him.

He had remembered her from the opera. More than remembered, Natasha thought, as the heat rose in her face. Because he hadn’t just recognized her. He was enchanted by her. He was staring, openly and shamelessly, as if she had enslaved his will to hers, as if she held him captive and would not let him look away.

It thrilled her, to think that she could. It frightened her, to think that he had done the same to her.

He was so handsome, so natural, so unstudied. Everything he thought, she could see it on his face the moment he thought it. So unlike Andrey’s polished reserve, his distant smile. And Anatole was even handsomer now, in the brilliant light of morning, than he’d been under the silvery lights at the opera. She could see him more clearly now. The slimness of his shoulders, the tight sweep of his chest, his large eyes and delicate, expressive lips. Lips that even now she could feel against the back of her hand, pressed there in a chaste kiss as he bid her farewell at the opera. And as she sat watching him, she could imagine those lips moving away from her hand. Whispering down her neck, as his arms wrapped around her from behind. She could almost feel the firm warmth of his lean body pressing hard against her, and his voice, murmuring in her ear, breath soft and intoxicating— _Natasha_ , he would say, she almost heard him say, like a spirit come to her alone, _Natasha_.

Natasha dropped her eyes.

Marya was saying something to her, though she wasn’t listening and merely nodded at what she thought were appropriate moments. Natasha clenched her thighs close together, and shivered. In the house of God, she thought, and almost laughed.

When she looked up again, Anatole still watched her. He smiled and inclined his head in a seated bow. Natasha flushed with the thought that anyone might have seen him do it. But he had only greeted her. It was natural. Permissible. They had spoken last night. And was she not allowed to say hello to anyone because Andrey wasn’t here? She smiled back, gratified and afraid at the honest way his face lit up when she acknowledged him.

Pierre reached over Hélène to tug Anatole’s sleeve, catching his attention. With obvious reluctance, Anatole turned. Natasha thought about Anatole’s jacket. How easily he would remove it, when he came home after church. Carelessly, tossing it over a chair perhaps. He would stand there then in his shirtsleeves, only a thin layer of linen separating his faultless body from the world.

And then, after that, he would have to change for dinner, and he might…

“Natasha,” Sonya said, a note of mistrust rising in her voice.

Natasha did not look away from Anatole. “Yes?” she said.

“What’s the matter with you this morning?” Sonya asked.

Anatole’s head was still turned, responding to Pierre. He was as handsome in profile as he was straight-on. Perhaps it was a trick of the church’s golden light, but Natasha thought she could see a bruise on his handsome cheek that had not been there at the opera. She shivered. She wanted to kiss him, erase whatever hurt had been done to him. She wanted it badly.

“It’s so beautiful,” Natasha said to Sonya. “That’s all.”

Anatole turned back, and she saw her own expression reflected in his. Surprise, that she could want to continue looking at him, could want to see him.

Could want him?

He had no idea.

Natasha trembled.

The service was the most beautiful Natasha had ever heard. Her soul soared with the rhythm of the prayer, the harmony of the music. She sang the hymns as well as she ever had, though the notes were below her range and the melodies were boring. Through every note, she wondered what Anatole’s voice would sound like, if he were to sing. It strengthened her resolve to hear his voice again.

His lips never moved, not for any song, not for any prayer.

His eyes did not move either.

All too soon, the priest and his attendants recessed from the cathedral, and the Moscow faithful were left to find their way back into the secular world. Pierre and his wife stood and turned toward the door, plainly in no mood to make small talk with their neighbors. Hélène seemed to bristle as Pierre took her hand, and Pierre’s words were too low and too sharp for Natasha to catch. Natasha wondered if they had quarreled. But she wondered this faintly. Most of her attention had another target.

Because Anatole was leaving with them. And that would not do.

Natasha looked over her shoulder. Marya was in quick conversation with a formidable old woman with pearl earrings the size of thimbles. Quick as thought, Natasha left her seat and bolted across the aisle, toward the door.

She caught him in the middle of the aisle and tapped him softly on the shoulder. Even through the jacket, he was warm. Solid. Powerfully, frighteningly alive. When he turned, he looked as though a vision of the Lord had appeared to him in the center of the church.

“Countess Rostova,” he said.

It had been less than twelve hours since Natasha left Anatole, and yet when he said her name, it was as if she’d longed for him for a hundred years.

“Natasha,” she said. “Please.”

“Anything you wish, _ma chère_ ,” Anatole said.

Natasha wanted to keep him talking. She wanted to watch the movement of his handsome lips, see the light that warmed his deep blue eyes as he spoke. He could have preached a sermon at her for two hours and she would have hung on every word.

And she had something to say to him as well, but she couldn’t speak the words, not yet. If she put the idea in words, it would be real. And she would have to come to terms with what it meant. Those three simple words that could break down an engagement, reject a future, and start everything over.

“The church is beautiful, isn’t it?” she said instead, rather pointlessly, and gestured at the ceiling.

“Yes,” Anatole said, and smiled. “More beautiful today than ever. I suspect the company is to blame.”

Natasha blushed scarlet.

“I wonder, if you aren’t engaged this evening—” Anatole began.

“Natasha!” Marya said, and appeared behind her, Sonya trailing in her wake. “There you are. Where did you run off to?”

Natasha loved her godmother and her cousin dearly. But in that moment, she could have wished them anywhere else. Petersburg. Nizhny Novgorod. The moon.

Anatole, catching her irritation, smiled, though not unkindly. “Forgive me, Marya Dmitrievna,” he said, and bowed. “It’s my fault. I’ve delayed the countess with my idle conversation.”

While Marya did not seem suspicious, she did not seem impressed either. Nose in the air at a thirty-degree angle, she gestured for Natasha to follow her. “Idle conversation seems to be your specialty, Kuragin,” she said coolly. “Do you have any practical talents of which I am unaware?”

“I manage the violin fairly well,” Anatole said, with the aggravating charm of someone choosing not to be offended. “And the waltz, I’m told. Countess, if—”

“Natasha, we must go,” Marya interrupted,  “or the carriage will leave without us.”

Natasha looked imploringly at Anatole. Please, she thought. Rescue me from these idle people. These boring, stiff, formal people with their prosaic expectations and their dull, uneventful lives. Don’t make Moscow the same as the countryside was. Make my life _interesting._

In a way, he listened.

Anatole bowed, moving out of the way to allow the three women to pass through the door. Marya brushed past him as though he were a gas lamp, nudging her elbow into his side in a way Natasha suspected was intentional. But as Natasha started to go, he stepped forward and extended his hand. Heart trembling, she gave him hers. He brought it to his fine mouth and brushed his lips against it in a kiss. She flushed warm, and not just where his lips touched her.

“It was a pleasure to see you, Natalie,” he said. “A happiness I hope to repeat very soon.”

Natalie, she thought. She had always been Natalya to strangers and Natasha to friends. Andrey called her Natasha. No one had ever called her Natalie. She wondered why. It sounded beautiful. She could feel the vibration of his voice against her, deep within her, like a shock of pain, a bow against the strings of a violin, the world trembling beneath her feet.

Natalie.

Had Natasha been the girl who left her father’s estate one week before, she would have blushed to the soles of her feet and fled the church. She would have laughed with Sonya in the carriage the entire way home, about mad Prince Anatole who didn’t know the rules of society, who could not behave, who had the nerve to think an engaged woman might welcome his advances.

But Natasha was not that girl any longer.

Before removing her hand from Anatole’s, Natasha let it trail softly across his palm, to the delicate inside of his wrist. She pressed the tips of her fingers there, feeling his pulse against them. The veins in his wrist were like the strata of rock through a canyon, telling the history of the earth. His breath faltered. She smiled.

“I hope to have that happiness as well,” she said.

A city full of blessings, she thought. And, flushed and elated, she hurried after Marya Dmitrievna, who by this point was leaning out of the carriage window shouting at Natasha, threatening to leave her behind.


	5. Adoration

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Fedya and Anatole are also not super-clear on the usual reasons people to go church.

Fedya waited on the opposite side of the square, sitting on a small set of steps with his elbows on his knees. He watched as the morning light continued to strengthen and illuminate the golden cupola of St. Peter’s, bleeding dawn into day. He had not slept the night before, though he drank a great deal. Fedya could hold his liquor better than anyone else in his regiment, a skill he wished he didn’t possess. He wanted to be sick and hungover and in agony. It seemed like what he deserved. After last night. After what he’d done.

Instead, he sat, cold and clear-headed, and waited for Anatole.

A little after nine, the doors to the church opened, and people began to stream out into the square. Well dressed and well connected, smiling, speaking of nothing. Empty-headed and untroubled. Anatole’s people.

He saw that old cow Marya Dmitrievna in her ostentatious headdress, followed by a plain-looking young woman. Another girl followed several moments later, holding her skirt off the snowy ground as she raced down the stairs after Marya. Fedya scowled without meaning to. Natasha Rostova. A stupid little girl, brainless and ordinary. She wasn’t even good-looking, he thought. The lump in his chest would not release. Anatole had been inside for an hour, with Natasha. In that holy gilded space where Fedya, unwashed and over-tired and reeking of cheap booze, did not belong.

Moments later, he spotted Anatole passing through the door, ahead of Hélène and Pierre. Tall and elegant, he strode boldly down the stairs, in that way he had of making an entrance even when he was making an exit. He caught Fedya’s eye immediately and, with a few words in an undertone to Hélène and Pierre, detached himself from their group. He gestured for Fedya to follow him. Fedya did, as if the flick of Anatole’s beckoning wrist had tugged at a rope around his throat.

He followed Anatole to the side of the church, along a narrow side street that saw little traffic. A long sweep of marble stairs led to the side door of the cathedral. Anatole sat midway up the stairs, leaning back on his forearms and stretching his legs in front of him. At nearly six feet tall, Anatole managed to take up no fewer than seven stairs. Fedya suddenly felt very short and very small, like a dirty child in front of a statue. He folded his arms across his chest.

“Tolya,” he began.

Anatole said nothing. He tilted his head to the side, watching Fedya with blue eyes that were not expectant, or curious, or bored. His expression was so completely blank it had to be intentional. How had Fedya ever thought him stupid? Anatole was a master tactician. His perfect mask put Fedya off his game, left him at a loss. As always, Anatole commanded the field, and Fedya was left to follow.

“I never apologized last night,” Fedya said finally.

Anatole’s face betrayed nothing. “No,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” Fedya said. His voice, to his relief, did not break. Those two words were not enough, but they were something.

Anatole sat up straighter and twisted to face Fedya. His face permitted a hint of an expression, but Fedya still couldn’t tell what it was. “I’m already married,” he said. “I don’t see why Natasha is any different.”

So Anatole had figured it out. Fedya wondered how long it had taken him to work that through. He wondered, a moment later, whether Hélène had told him.

Anatole shook his head, though Fedya didn’t know what he was disagreeing with. “What I feel for her doesn’t change anything, _mon cher_.”

Fedya used to hate Anatole’s flashy habit of peppering his speech with French, but this morning it tugged at his heart like the words of a spell.

It did change things, of course. It changed everything.

Anatole had never cared much for Kataryna Lenskaya, the cut-rate gentlewoman he’d charmed into his bed a year before while on leave in Poland. The marriage had rescued the girl’s virtue and saved Anatole from the wrath of her father, who’d walked in on them just as the girl came with a particularly unladylike wail of pleasure. The father had dragged the naked and startled prince out of bed, pressed a pistol to his temple, and swore to blow out Anatole’s brains if he didn’t preserve her reputation by marrying her that next day. One would think Anatole would have learned something from that disaster. And he had, in his way. Ever since, Anatole told Fedya once, he made doubly certain to lock the door beforehand.

Fedya doubted Anatole had spoken to Kataryna since the wedding. Besides, the wench was in Minsk. A non-issue. Not like Natasha, who was there every day, in the grand boxes at the opera, in the gilded nave of St. Peter’s, here and there and everywhere. Catching Anatole’s eyes, taking his hand, stealing his heart.

Anatole loved Natasha, and Fedya could see it. That was a change.

Still. _Mon cher_. There was something in that, artificial and French though it was.

“I know you think it doesn’t change anything,” Fedya said. “But, Tolya. I—”

Damn it. Fedya drove his fist against his thigh. Why couldn’t he say the words? They weren’t hard to say. Anatole must say them to forty people a week. The difference was that Fedya meant them. Which made them impossible to get out.

 _I love you,_ he thought. Say it.

“You’ll get caught,” he said instead, and cursed himself twenty kinds of coward.

Anatole smiled and cupped Fedya’s cheek in one palm. Fedya stopped breathing. It was absurd, that Anatole could cause him to forget everything on earth but two blue eyes and a gentle smile. It was a weakness. A weakness like this would get him killed, when he returned to the front. He would have scorned this weakness in others. He wouldn’t have allowed it in himself, if he’d had any choice.

But Anatole’s hand was so warm, against his bare skin. And his smile was so naïve, so genuine. And his mouth, that damned mouth Fedya couldn’t stop thinking about kissing, as he answered.

“I won’t get caught,” Anatole said. “Don’t worry.”

Anatole had never worried about anything. His attention span was forty-five seconds. Honestly, it was a marvel his interest in Fedya lasted as long as it had. But it was enough, sometimes, that Anatole let Fedya believe there was more between them than a pleasant fondness and earth-shattering sex. A kindness and a cruelty at once.

Instead of answering him, Fedya wove one hand into Anatole’s hair. Their eyes met, and Fedya watched Anatole’s perfect mouth edge into a half-smile. Fedya wanted to walk away and never look at Anatole again. He wanted to run his thumb across the bow of Anatole’s handsome lips, feel their softness, trace the outline of the mouth he dreamed constantly of kissing. He did the latter, and hated himself for it.

Fedya closed his eyes—it wouldn’t count if he didn’t see, he told himself—and kissed Anatole softly, like a question.

Anatole answered instantly. He pulled Fedya to him, one arm around his waist, the other trailing up his back, inside the warm cocoon of his jacket. They fit together perfectly, always had. Anatole’s hands were bold, always were. Fedya felt Anatole’s fingers trail the ridge of his spine, then sink lower, south of Fedya’s waistband. Those perfect lips opened, his tongue tasting Fedya, exploring him. In control. Again. Always.

Anatole kissed like a professional, yet without artificiality. He meant it with all his heart, every time.

If Fedya were a man with brains, he’d leave it here. He’d walk away, knowing who Anatole was, what he wanted, where this would go.

At the moment, Fedya was not a man with brains.

Anatole’s hand was wrist-deep down Fedya’s trousers, first just the one, then the other snuck around the front and began to nudge down Fedya’s fly, and Fedya knew Anatole really would, right here, on the steps of the church, but he didn’t care, because he would too, he would do anything for Anatole, send his soul straight to hell for this stupid beautiful man, and he ached with wanting Anatole and his kiss grew hungrier, bolder, harder, until his lips against Anatole’s neck would surely leave bruises, and then—

“Far be it from me to interrupt, Toto,” Hélène said from a few steps away.

Fedya felt his heart shudder. He leapt backward and pushed Anatole away hard. Anatole, overbalancing, caught himself on the marble steps with a small whine of annoyance. Without thinking, Fedya’s hands darted to the pocket of his jacket, to the trigger of his waiting pistol. The last time someone had crept up on him without warning, six of his men had been killed in a sudden storm of French shells. He could smell the smoke again, hear their screams. His breathing quickened, fast enough to turn his head.

No. He gripped the pistol to steady himself. He was no longer at the front. He was on the steps of St. Peter’s, next to Anatole Kuragin, and his sister was standing four stairs away from them, watching.

This turn of events, he realized, was scarcely any better.

Mutely, he refastened his fly.

That was it. They were ruined. Best-case, Hélène would have Fedya run out of Moscow. Worst-case, he and Anatole would be arrested, imprisoned, shipped to Siberia for crimes against decency. He looked at Anatole, panicked, expecting to see panic in return.

Anatole barely blinked.

Fedya would never understand the Kuragins. Hélène should have been screaming at Anatole, denouncing him as a degenerate, proclaiming his damnation to the streets. Anatole should have been off-balance, panicked and stammering. Instead, Anatole smiled at his sister, and made no attempt to explain what was happening. In a supreme show of boldness, he’d leaned back toward Fedya, and left his hand midway up Fedya’s thigh. The tips of his fingers circled, delicate and suggestive, toward Fedya’s fly, with which they had unfinished business. Fedya shivered. It was incredibly difficult to pay attention to what they were saying.

“Something wrong, Lena?” Anatole asked.

“We’re leaving,” Hélène said. “Unless you want to walk home, finish up.”

 _Finish up._ Who were these people?

Anatole nodded. “Fedya, meet me later,” he said. “This afternoon, behind Matreshka’s. I’ll find you.”

Fedya nodded. What else could he do? He would meet Anatole anywhere, at any time, with nothing more than a word. He might fight it all he wanted—and fight it he would—but it would come to nothing. The man had mastered him.

And damn him, Anatole knew that. His smile warmed, and he kissed Fedya once more. Tenderly, taking his time. Then he rose, his elegant body unfolding itself from the stairs, and left Fedya alone.

Or, not quite alone. Because Hélène had not moved.

Anatole paused halfway down the stairs, sensing he was not being followed. He glanced back with large, inquisitive eyes. Hélène shooed him away with a wave of one hand. Fedya watched him go with regret. Not only because the winter felt so much colder without him, but because Hélène was fixing him with a look that wished him death.

Maybe Anatole should have panicked.

Fedya stood up, squaring his shoulders with the strength he brought to a duel or to the battlefield. He would not let this woman intimidate him. Fedya was a soldier. A captain. He had led a battalion of soldiers through the smoke-reeking air, bullets flying, to slay thousands of French. Hélène was nothing. Fedya was more than strong enough for this.

“If you hurt my brother, Dolokhov,” Hélène said, her voice low and poisonous. “If you lay another hand on him, I will tear out your insides and hang you with them. Understood?”

Fedya did not back down. Instead, he took a step toward Hélène. He was not much taller than her, but his chest was broad, his arms strong, his body and mind both trained for fighting. His hands twitched toward fists. Fedya had no doubt Hélène meant what she said. The Kuragins would kill for one another without blinking. But no one spoke to Fedya Dolokhov that way. Once, a soldier had attempted to disrespect Fedya at the front. Made some ill-conceived comment about his mother, in an attempt to look tough in front of his fellows. Fedya had the man whipped until blood ran from his back into the snow. He’d seen crows nosing at the crimson stain, later, attracted by the scent of carrion. Fedya would have challenged Hélène to a duel then and there if he could. His honor was all he had. Honor, and drink, and Anatole.

But he could hardly shoot Hélène there on the steps of a church. He forced himself to swallow his anger.

“I love him,” he said. Why could he say it now, in front of her, when it didn’t matter?

Hélène looked at him with loathing. “I don’t care about that,” she said. “Love him or don’t, that’s not my concern. But hurt him and I will kill you.”

She turned her back on him and strode after Anatole, toward the carriage where no doubt a deeply perplexed Pierre waited for both of them.

Left behind again, Fedya stood cold and confused, watching them go.

Anatole had forgiven him. But he hadn’t sworn to forget Natasha. What had he said? _What I feel for her doesn’t change anything._

Turning his back on the church, he wandered back into the center of town, which still held the hush of an early Sunday morning. He had hours to fill yet, and the day seemed long and directionless. A list of things he ought to do drifted through Fedya’s mind, each less inspiring than the last. He had all but disappeared from the army since arriving in Moscow, though his leave would not last forever. He needed to report to the war office. Inspect his regiment. Consult with his superiors on the latest tactical plans for the French. Write to his mother, a task weeks overdue by this point.

Instead, Fedya thrust his hands into the pockets of his coat and took a sharp turn toward Matreshka’s. It was a Sunday, and it was nine o’clock in the morning, and he didn’t give a damn. Fedya Dolokhov was going to track down Balaga, and he was going to go shoot something.


	6. Abomination

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Anatole very nearly stabs Pierre with a bread knife.

Anatole paced the upstairs hall of Pierre and Hélène’s home. Back and forth, one way and then the other. He could not sit. A kind of mad energy had possessed him since Hélène left the house with his note for Natasha, the one begging her to come to the party Hélène was hosting at the house that evening.

He really had begged. The note was shameless. About half a step shy of serenading Natasha beneath her window. Hélène had read it and snorted with laughter before leaving. But Anatole didn’t mind that. He had no intention of taking romantic advice from his sister. For all her obvious skill at seduction, she’d ended up married to Pierre. Anatole had enough faith in his own charms to trust he could make a better match than his sister.

An unkind voice in his head reminded him of Kataryna and her father. Anatole politely told the voice to be quiet.

Hélène had only been gone twenty minutes. Not nearly long enough to expect a response. But Anatole didn’t think he could bear it much longer. He hated working by proxy, but how else could he do this? He’d tried to ask Natasha at the church, but Marya Dmitrievna had prevented that. And if he went to the house himself to call on her, that domineering old woman would murder him. In her eyes, his attentions were obscene, cruel, vulgar. Whereas in reality, there was nothing purer than what he wanted. Love, and nothing else. He had to get Natasha away. Had to bring her out of that world and into his, where their love mattered more than what other people said. He could show her that. He wanted to. But he needed to get her here.

“Anatole?” Pierre said from the far end of the hall.

Startled, Anatole tripped. He righted himself on the wall, adjusting his damaged dignity. He hadn’t even heard Pierre arrive.

“Are you trying to wear a hole in the ceiling of my study?” Pierre asked.

“Digging a trench,” Anatole said wryly, scuffing one foot along the floorboards. “My contribution to the war effort.”

Pierre snorted. The bearlike sound was the closest Anatole had ever heard him come to laughter, at least when sober. “You look a wreck,” he said. “Are you all right?”

The show of concern surprised Anatole. It wasn’t the sort of question you asked the brother of a woman you hated. Ordinarily, Anatole would have given Pierre a wide berth, particularly given what Hélène had told him last night without telling him. But the agitation in Anatole’s mind was the very devil. Thoughts of Natasha would drive him mad without a distraction. He wouldn’t have chosen Pierre if given another option, but it would have to do.

He shrugged and fought to compose his expression, calm he could project if not feel. “Perfectly all right,” he said. “I hope I haven’t interrupted your studying.”

Pierre looked down, blushing like a child. Anatole smirked. Clearly studying had been far from Pierre’s thoughts when the sound of Anatole’s pacing reached him. Far more likely, the man had been asleep at his desk, head resting on his arms. It would certainly explain the rumpled state of his jacket.

“Not at all,” Pierre said. “I…I thought I might lunch at the club,” he said in a rush. “If you would care to join me. There’s something we ought to discuss.”

Anatole wanted to laugh, but managed to contain himself out of respect for the poor man’s feelings. Pierre had invited Anatole with the nervousness of a boy asking a young woman for a kiss. Well, Anatole was flattered, but he had enough suitors to be getting on with. Too many, some might say.

“Of course, Pierre, good man,” Anatole said. “A little wine to chase away studying and pacing, eh?”

Hélène would be a good while yet, Anatole reasoned, retreating to the guest room to fetch his coat. She had other errands to deal with before Anatole’s. Without Pierre’s intervention, Anatole would have paced the corridor until dusk, when Hélène’s guests finally began to arrive, and he would find out then whether or not Natasha would come. And, he had to admit it, he was curious what topic of discussion Pierre had in mind. Anatole had lived in his brother-in-law’s spare bedroom for two months, but they’d never had what one might call an intimate conversation.

The members stared as Anatole and Pierre entered the club together. Disapproval was palpable in their beady eyes, flashing scandalized behind gold-rimmed spectacles. Pierre quailed under their gaze, but Anatole clapped him bracingly on the shoulder.

“Don’t fret, _mon ami_ ,” he said. “It’s not you they hate, it’s me.”

This was quite true. Papa had sent Anatole to Moscow with nothing but Hélène's address and a stream of ill report that caused the club members to regard Anatole with suspicion and dislike. Granted, he had earned most of that. But after the first few days in Moscow, Anatole had grown used to this. He knew whose opinions mattered and whose didn’t.

Anatole led Pierre to the maître d’ at the club’s main dining room. The officious little man looked at Pierre and Anatole as if they were each a horse walking on two legs.

“Private table for two, monsieur,” Anatole said, turning on his most winning smile. “For Prince Anatole Kuragin and guest.”

The maître d’ frowned. “Young man,” he said in a tight voice. “Count Bezukhov has been an esteemed member of the English Club for ten years. And,” he added, “he pays his bill.”

Anatole looked at Pierre in good-natured surprise. Pierre blushed and looked at his feet. Esteemed member of the English Club, maybe, but you’d never know it from the way Pierre shrank in terror from eye contact with the moderately respectable. “ _Alors_ ,” Anatole amended, the winning qualities of his smile never dipping. “For Count Pierre Bezukhov and guest.”

Satisfied, the maître d’ escorted them to a secluded table in the corner of the dining room, near a window overlooking the street. Pierre secured a bottle of wine from the waiter, then laid out instructions for a three-course meal that must have cost a hundred rubles. Anatole, politely impressed, poured himself a drink and let Pierre have at it. He himself had eaten nothing since breakfast the day before. It kept slipping his mind, and drink had kept him full enough since then. But Pierre certainly knew how to lay a table. Besides, Anatole was flat broke. He’d eat better if he let Pierre lead the charge.

Once the waiter left them in peace, Pierre cleared his throat. Then he cleared it again, for no evident reason. Anatole waited. For all the time Pierre spent in books, one would think he’d be quicker with words. Finally, Pierre settled for the best phrasing he had.

“Anatole, I think you know my wife and I are…we have had a falling-out,” he said.

A falling-out. That was one way of putting it. Anatole had seen Hélène cry three times in his life. He remembered each vividly. Once when Mama died, when Anatole was nine and Hélène eleven. Once on the night before her marriage, where he’d held her as she wept, then helped her empty a full bottle of rum. And once last night. Whatever Pierre had said or done, it must have been inhuman.

Pierre went on, looking at his fork. “I know how deep her affection is for you, and yours for her,” he said, and colored, as if regretting his choice of words. “So I should hate to think there was any ill will between you and I.”

Anatole paused. “I should hate to think there was any ill will between you and my sister,” he said.

_Men always say they don’t mean it. They always do._

Curtailing Pierre’s response, the waiter reappeared, bearing their first course, a liver pâté and brown bread, rustic and strong. Anatole’s stomach twisted, reminding him how stupid it was to go that long without eating. He spread a spoonful of pâté on a slice of bread and ate with a calm designed to unsettle Pierre.

Pierre cleared his throat again. Anatole had half a mind to ask the man if he’d contracted consumption.

“Did she tell you the nature of our disagreement?” Pierre asked.

Anatole shook his head. “I suggest you do that.”

Pierre had clearly hoped Hélène had been the one to break this news. Words seemed to elude him. He took a long drink of wine, paused for breath, and then took another. Finally, he addressed Anatole without looking at him.

“I had a great deal to drink last night,” Pierre said. “And I confess, I was angry that your sister preferred your company and Dolokhov’s to mine. And so I…I confronted your sister, and there are parts of that I wish I could take back.”

It was _your sister_ now, not _my wife_. Anatole sat up straighter. A quick flame of anger had kindled in his chest, though he didn’t know the exact cause of it yet. Cow-eyed innocent or not, if Pierre had hurt Hélène, Anatole would stab him through the hand with the bread knife, God as his witness he would.

“Did you touch her?” Anatole said. His voice was very low and did not sound like his own.

Pierre started, shocked by the accusation. “No,” he said. “God, no.” Then, he paused. Rallying himself to finish the thought. The words spilled out in the same rush the invitation had, a desperate race before he lost his nerve. “But I told her I thought you did.”

Anatole stared. The words did not make sense. He could not understand them.

“You thought I did what?” he said.

“Touched her,” Pierre said, to his knees. “Intimately. Sinfully.”

The breath escaped from Anatole in a disbelieving hum. It sounded like a laugh, but it wasn’t.

Pierre thought Anatole lusted after Hélène. Seduced her like he might any whore after dark. Pleasured her, and was pleasured by her.

Fucked her.

Hélène. His sister.

A lover.

Pierre’s revolted expression that morning, when Anatole awoke beside Hélène. His piercing gaze in the carriage. Pierre believed this. Pierre had accused him of this behind his back, and to his sister’s face.

Was that what Pierre saw, now, looking across the table at Anatole? Did Pierre picture him nude, luxuriating in the sheets where Pierre slept chastely beside Hélène? Did he imagine Anatole running his hands down the curve of Hélène’s bare thighs, his tongue teasing her breast like an artist’s paintbrush against a palette? Did he imagine Hélène closing her eyes, sighing into his caress, with a pleasure she would never show Pierre?

Did he think that was why Hélène wouldn’t touch him?

Anatole’s hands shook. He glanced at the bread knife and felt vomit rise in his throat. He swallowed hard.

He and Hélène.

Hélène naked in his arms, kissing his neck, her lips hard enough to bruise.

Lovers.

“I was drunk,” Pierre said, when Anatole said nothing. “And I was jealous and angry.”

“I hope you know,” Anatole said to the knife, with a curious pain in his chest he did not understand, “that as a man of honor, I cannot allow you to speak such words to me.”

Pierre stared. It was a mark of Anatole’s deathly seriousness that Pierre didn’t even comment on the questionable aptness of the phrase _a man of honor_. He bit his lip, afraid. “Are you saying you require satisfaction?”

Anatole smiled, a cruel and cold smile he seldom used, one he’d learned from Papa. “If that’s what you believe, Peter Kirilovich, I don’t see what choice you give me.”

His voice was level, his hands steady now that he had a plan. The prospect of a duel held no terror for him. It would not be his first. Anatole had found himself forty paces from a pistol on three separate occasions, and though he was no Fedya, he had never once missed a target when it mattered. He always shot to wound, not to kill, but as he looked at Pierre and heard his words echoing, _intimately, sinfully,_ he thought there might be a first time for everything.

“I take it back,” Pierre said quickly. He reached across the table and took Anatole’s narrow hands in his broad palms. His hands were callused and faintly damp. Anatole wanted to pull away. He wasn’t sure why he didn’t. “I was drunk, I regret ever saying it, and I beg you to forgive me. I know you are a respectable gentleman, and my wife is a chaste and godly woman.”

Anatole laughed, though Pierre’s words still burned. “Well now,” he said, and patted Pierre’s large hands on the knuckles, “don’t get carried away.”

Pierre looked up, his dull eyes hopeful. “So you forgive me?” he asked, so earnestly that Anatole felt himself doing so without wanting to. “And you’ll speak to your wife, and beg her to forgive me as well?”

Anatole narrowed his eyes. For a long moment, he did not speak.

“My sister,” he corrected quietly.

Pierre stared, realizing his slip. He began to stammer out an apology, but Anatole held up a hand, cutting him off.

“You’ve been kind to me, Pierre,” he said. “I needed you, and you helped me, and I’m grateful for that. But I tell you this, _mon cher_ ,” he added, “if you repeat that to anyone, I will shoot you where you stand. And not a man alive would blame me.”

Pierre nodded. Relief flooded his face, commingled with terror. “Never, I swear,” he said. “You will come to the ball tonight, I hope?”

He meant it as a peace offering. It was not nearly enough. As if Anatole could resume seeing Pierre in the old light—eccentric, avuncular, harmless—after hearing words like that.

Anatole drained the rest of his wine and stood, pushing back his chair. “Of course,” he said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me. I’m off to fuck my goddamned sister.”

Leaving Pierre stammering, Anatole swept away from the table. A nearby pair of middle-aged gentlemen in pince-nez had clearly been straining to overhear the conversation. They leapt into an insincere and transparent discussion the moment Anatole passed.

Anatole spilled out into the street, his blood high, head humming. He wanted to scream, to strike something, to hurt someone. His chest still hurt. He could not stop thinking about Hélène, about him and Hélène, with Pierre’s words ringing through his mind.

_Intimately. Sinfully._

Damn him. The idiot. Because he didn’t know how to please her, he thought Anatole had stolen her away. Just because Anatole cared about her. Just because he could make her smile. Two things Pierre could never do.

The anger began to twist, closer to tears now. He hated everything. Pierre was his enemy. Moscow was cold and foreign. Hélène was gone—he’d sent her to the countess, God knew when she’d been back. And Fedya…

And what of Fedya.

Fedya would have wanted Anatole to come to him with this. He always said it, when they lay together in bed afterward. Fedya stroking Anatole’s hair, Anatole lazily bathing him with kisses, tasting the salt of Fedya’s sweat sharp on his tongue. Their affection slow and gratuitous, already satisfied, luxuriating in the excess of it. _We could talk, too, Tolya. I know you think, even if you pretend not to. You can trust me with what you’re thinking._

Fedya wanted that. He wanted not just to fuck Anatole but to understand him. To possess him body and soul and thoughts and hopes and fears. If Anatole had come to him now, frantic and angry and weeping, and collapsed in his arms for comfort, Fedya would have liked nothing better. Fedya might have thanked Pierre for believing Anatole violated his sister, if only for the occasion to own another piece of him.

Anatole stopped walking.

Fedya would have liked that so much, he thought.

To see him broken, so that he could be put back together.

He glanced down the boulevard, in the direction of Matreshka’s, where he’d told Fedya to meet him later that afternoon. Passersby parted around him, more than one stopping to glare at Anatole for blocking the road. Or for another reason, perhaps— _sinfully,_ the echo of Pierre’s words drifting back.

No, Anatole decided, he would not go. Not now, perhaps not later, although he’d promised. That wasn’t love. Ownership. Self-erasure. Giving yourself to another person with a rope around your neck, for them to drag you any direction they wanted. Their possession. An object, he thought, and shivered. It felt vile.

Anatole cared for Fedya. He did. Sincerely. Fedya was clever, daring, bold, confident, ungodly handsome, and when he was happy and sober he treasured Anatole like a god. You couldn’t help but be fond of someone like that. But Anatole couldn’t let Fedya love him the way Fedya wanted to. Anatole couldn’t be loved by anyone that way.

“Anatole?” Hélène asked, rounding the corner. She wore her long mink cloak, the tops of her boots were dusted with snow, and she seemed happy. Perhaps she’d finished her errands earlier than he thought.

“Lena,” he said. His voice still sounded strange. His chest ached worse now.

Hélène’s air of satisfaction faded as she drew nearer. No doubt she could see the agitation in his eyes. Anatole had done his best to hide it, but he could never hide anything from Hélène. Nothing that mattered. Besides, he’d been standing in the middle of a crowded street, his coat unbuttoned, staring at nothing. She took Anatole by the arm and led him down the boulevard, back toward the house. Her touch felt hot through his coat.

“What happened?” Hélène asked. “You look like you’ve been shot.”

“I…” Anatole was never at a loss for words. This stuttering was unendurable. He swallowed hard, then tried again. “Pierre invited me to lunch,” he said—finally, his voice was coming back. “To apologize, I think. It isn’t his strong suit.”

“Fuck,” Hélène said, loudly enough for three people in the boulevard to turn and stare. Given the circumstances, Anatole could have wished she’d chosen a different curse. “That beast,” she said.

Anatole took a shuddering breath. Be calm, he told himself. Don’t let her see. Pretend it’s nothing. God, he should have shot Pierre when he had the chance.

“No one who’s anyone listens to him, Toto,” Hélène said.

“So you suggest we ignore him?” Anatole said wryly. “Let it go?”

Hélène smiled. It seemed a curious remark to smile at. She slid her arm through his and then folded her hands, as if they were only taking an afternoon walk, as if nothing had happened.

“Don’t think about Pierre,” Hélène said. “God knows I don’t. He’s not worth it. Think about Natasha, dear brother.”

Anatole nearly lost his footing in the snow. If Hélène hadn’t been holding his arm, he’d have fallen. In the agony of his conversation with Pierre, Natasha’s face had vanished from his mind for the first time since the opera. Anticipation rushed back with the force of an artillery shell. “You spoke to her?” he asked, trying and failing to keep the urgency from his voice. “You gave her the letter?”

Hélène smirked. “She is a charming little thing, isn’t she?” she said. “Yes, I gave her your ridiculous letter. She accepted the invitation at once, smiling like a fool. You’re made for each other. Not a rational thought between you.”

The world had seemed cloudy and cruel and pointless five minutes ago. Now, with the prospect of seeing Natasha again that evening—hours from now, hours and not days—it again seemed bright and beautiful. Natasha had read his letter. She cared for him, thought of him tenderly. Smiled at his letter. Wanted to see him.

Wanted him?

“She’s enchanted, Toto,” Hélène said, and elbowed Anatole in the ribs. “Frankly I don’t know how you do it.”

Anatole turned without thinking and kissed Hélène on the cheek. “God, I adore you, Lena,” he said.

Hélène smiled and pressed his arm fondly to her side, guiding him home. “I know,” she said. “Come on.”


	7. Substitution

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Fedya is even worse with feelings than we previously thought.

Strictly speaking, Olga Ivanovna had not given Fedya permission to use the small yard behind her brothel for target practice. But Fedya took her silence as tacit approval. After all, he could have brought his pistol inside Matreshka’s and tried shooting holes in the wallpaper. He needed to fire a gun at something, so it might as well be the tree out back.

He pulled back the hammer and sighted for three heartbeats, then four, five. He didn’t need to aim as long as he did—the moment he loaded the gun, he knew each of the bullets would bury itself exactly where he intended, exactly when he meant it to. But that was half the pleasure of shooting. The certainty. The total and utter control. You aimed, you fired, you hit. Simple.

Fedya was no longer suited for civilian life, for the opera, for polite drawing-room conversation. For people like Anatole. After three deployments to the front, his brain didn’t work that way. It leapt to conclusions, formulated plans on the instant and enacted them with violence, hung on small insults and shattered at loud noises. But damn it, he could still shoot, and that was a skill worth having no matter what. He would stretch out that sense of domination as long as he could.

_Bang._

The bullet thudded dead in the center of the circle they’d dug into the tree bark, a seven-inch ring etched out with Balaga’s knife. Fedya smiled. Not bad.

“You’re on leave,” Balaga said, from behind him. The troika driver lounged against the wall of the brothel, a half-empty bottle of wine in one hand, his fur hat knocked askew either by drink or the earlier attentions of Olga Ivanovna’s girls. “Can’t you let the gun rest for ten minutes?”

Fedya pulled the hammer back again. It locked in place with a satisfying click. “No,” he said. “Shut up, or I’ll shoot you instead.”

_Bang._

A second bullet, directly atop the first. Fedya’s hands smelled of oil and gunpowder. He inhaled, luxuriating in it like a perfume. A true scent, an honest one. Not like the faint bite of amber cologne, in the front row of the opera, when a young man who’d barely earned his sword and spurs, who’d been deployed to work behind a desk, when that young man smiled and leaned across him—

_Bang._

The third shot went wide. Still within the ring—even distracted, Fedya was the best shot in Moscow—but a good two inches right of center.

Balaga, noticing, smirked and took a swig of wine. “Something’s on your mind, Dolokhov,” he said. “Best work that out now. Get distracted at the front and the frogs will have you skewered.”

Damn the French, Fedya thought, with venom more suited to the battlefield than to a Moscow whorehouse. Damn them, with their military cruelty and their flashy uniforms. Their glittering eyes, their inauthentic speech, the way their hands would weave into your hair and pull you down as they lay in your bed, until your lips met theirs and they would whisper into the kiss, their breath dancing across your cheek, _mon petit ours, mon cher._

“Why doesn’t he come?” Fedya snarled.

Balaga raised his thick eyebrows and took another swig of wine. If swigs of wine could speak, this one said _thank God I am not in love._ He didn’t ask who Fedya meant. Balaga knew secrets about Anatole and Fedya that could get them sent to Siberia, if he decided to tell. Two young men could get up to anything in the back of a troika whose driver had no scruples, a fact Fedya and Anatole had learned long ago and exploited ever since. But they knew Balaga would never tell. A drunk and a rogue, yes, but Fedya trusted the driver with his life.

“What time did he say?” Balaga said.

He hadn’t, of course. Why would Anatole ever give a prosaic detail like time? The world operated on his schedule, according to his whim, and Fedya was left to wait around and hope that before the day was out, he’d remember his promise.

“What time is it?” Fedya asked.

Balaga pulled a dented watch from the pocket of his greatcoat and consulted it. The consultation lasted far longer than a sober man would need to deduce the time. “Quarter after ten,” he said.

Afternoon. Damn it, Anatole said afternoon. And now it was past ten. Hélène was hosting a ball that night, Fedya remembered. An event the frivolous, self-satisfied Anatole would rather have thrown himself in front of a train than miss. He would be there now, descending the stairs, insinuating himself into conversations and dances, scanning the crowd for a woman’s bare neck, her fine arms, her narrow shoulders.

Natasha. Of course Tolya had asked Natasha to Hélène’s ball. Of course Natasha would go. She was a stupid girl, and a stupid girl couldn’t resist Anatole Kuragin once he decided to turn on his charm. Hell, Fedya was an infantry officer, he’d _killed_ men, shot them in cold blood, and he couldn’t resist Anatole. They would be there now, the two of them, his hand on her waist, their bodies so close every breath brought them nearer—

Fedya fired three more shots, straight into the center of the target.

“He can go to the devil, for all I care,” Fedya snapped. “Lend me forty rubles?”

Balaga paused. His wry expression invited Fedya to remember who was the respectable infantry officer and who was the drunk troika driver. “I would, if you ever paid me,” he said. “What do you need it for?”

Fedya brandished his pistol in the general direction of the brothel. Balaga threw up his hands, shielding his face from the potential rain of gunfire. But Fedya was out of ammunition, otherwise he’d have spent the rest of the night out there, firing shots into a tree. “If you think I’m going to stand outside a whorehouse all night and not go in,” he said.

Balaga laughed. There, clearly, was a motivation he could understand. “All right, my fine fellow,” he said, and passed Fedya a small handful of banknotes from his pocket. “There’s fifty. Make me proud. And pay me back,” he called, as Fedya clapped him on the shoulder, in thanks but not obligation. “A man can’t live on friendship alone!”

“He can try,” Fedya said, and disappeared into the house.

Olga looked at Fedya in faint distaste as he entered the brothel. A badly lit space, smoky walls and the overpowering scent of bodies and cheap liquor. The place took its underground charm seriously—if charm were the right word. When Fedya and Anatole came here together, it felt exciting, dangerous. Like fucking in a trench during a war, bullets flying overhead. Alone, it felt disgusting. But Fedya wasn’t going anywhere else tonight.

“Alone tonight, Monsieur Dolokhov?” Olga asked. She sat on the sofa with her feet up, absently turning the pages of a trashy romance novel.

Fedya scowled. What kind of question was that in a whorehouse? “Not for long,” he said. “What do you have tonight? I can pay.”

Olga marked her place in her book, then stood up. She was not much taller standing than seated. The top of her dirty-blond hair came to Fedya’s shoulder. “For you?” she said, looking him over. “Not much. You’d be better off somewhere that specializes in your sort of thing. Somewhere on Komenka Boulevard.”

He could wait this woman out, as long as it took. He was a soldier of the Tsar, a decorated officer. Lightly decorated, but still. And Olga Ivanovna was a shriveled old bawd who needed his money. Fedya crossed his arms and waited, turning his worst glare on her.

Finally, Olga clicked her tongue and gestured for Fedya to follow. She led him into a stairwell and up to the second landing, then through the door into a small parlor. Within, four men were engaged in an unskilled game of cards, passing the time. They looked up as Fedya entered.

“What I lack in choices,” Olga said, gesturing at the quartet, “I make up for in quality. As you see.”

Fedya closed his eyes. He almost wanted to laugh. Or cry. Scream. Something. Because the universe loathed him. It must. Jesus Christ. This was absurd. Impossible. If he didn’t look, it wouldn’t be real.

He opened his eyes.

It wasn’t real. Not quite.

But for a long, horrifying moment, he’d thought he’d been looking at Anatole.

He stared at the young man sitting nearest the door, who looked back with professional disinterest. Tall and slim, fair-haired and wide-eyed, an innocent, empty smile at the edge of his handsome mouth. The resemblance was uncanny. Alarming, even. Fedya couldn’t have imagined a more infuriating man. The whore’s body was harder than Anatole’s, with sharper angles. The nose was wrong, the eyes brown instead of blue, and he lacked that aura of unstudied catlike grace that Fedya loved and loathed in the original. But if you squinted, and didn’t think. Or if you looked too quickly. It could have been him.

“Like what you see, Monsieur?” Olga asked. “Ilya, show a little respect, you tramp.”

The boy, Ilya, let the half-smile colonize the rest of his face. He stood and approached Fedya with innocence that rang false.

“I’ll take him,” Fedya said brusquely to Olga, not taking his eyes from Ilya. He slapped his money into her hand without asking the price.

Without looking, he could sense Olga’s smirk. She’d seen Fedya and Anatole together often enough to know what was happening. No doubt Fedya’s lovesick despair was better than one of her romance novels. But Fedya didn’t care what she thought. He was in a room of bawds and whores, he’d be damned if this was the moment he decided to start caring about public opinion.

He took Ilya by the wrist and led him to a room down the hall, closing the door hard. Ilya smiled. He’d been down this road before, Fedya knew, and with plenty of clients, however Olga protested that hers was not that kind of house. Ilya opened his mouth, preparing to say something innocently flirtatious. But Fedya was done letting others take the lead. He pulled Ilya to him, the whore’s back flush against his chest, and clamped a hand over Ilya’s mouth from behind, stopping his words before they formed. Fedya’s other hand gripped Ilya’s wrist until his knuckles ached.

Anatole’s eyes would have widened at that. He would have stared. Out of his element when silenced. Those blue eyes would have begun by laughing, until they realized that Fedya was serious. It would have startled him, the idea of Fedya doing what pleased him, whenever he wanted to, whatever that meant.

Ilya didn’t flinch.

“I don’t want you to speak,” Fedya said. It came as a whisper, low and commanding, his breath along Ilya’s neck. He had not removed his hand from the whore’s mouth. “And I want you to think about me tonight, and only me. I want to be the only person in the world for you. Do you understand?”

Ilya nodded. Fedya felt his hand move with the rhythm of the boy’s head. With a reluctance that made him feel somehow soiled, he pulled his hand away. His fingers had left long red marks along Ilya’s jaw.

“Good,” Fedya said. He jerked Ilya around to face him and kissed the man with the anger and hatred he wanted to show to Anatole.

Eyes closed, Fedya could see him. That idiot Kuragin. Eager and gasping into Fedya’s kiss as they shed their clothes, heat and urgency rising with skin against skin. Fedya remembered when he and Anatole had rented this very room for themselves, not two months ago. Somewhere they could be as loud as they liked without fear. Anatole, bent over this very bed, had moaned Fedya’s name with every thrust, which built Fedya’s desire to something inhuman, something unholy. He came with a shout, seeing stars. After, Anatole borrowed a violin from Nadya downstairs and tucked it under his chin, naked still, his perfect body perched on the windowsill. God knew the people in the courtyard below got quite a show. Anatole played an old folk song, simple but beautiful. One, he explained later, his mother had sung before she died. His face like a god’s, flushed with pleasure and innocent joy at the simple melody. Fedya, inhibitions loosened by then, knelt on the floor at Anatole’s feet, his lips caressing the hollow behind Anatole’s knees, the inside sweep of his thighs, upward and bolder, until he took Anatole’s length in his mouth and the violin screeched in counter-melody with Anatole’s wail. And Olga Ivanovna, standing in the door they hadn’t realized was open, turned to Nadya and said “Honestly, _ma petite_ , they should be asking us to pay _them._ ”

And now this.

Ilya’s act was convincing, but the taste was wrong, the feel, everything. There was more to Anatole than a fine body and a head of ridiculous hair. And Fedya knew he would never find it anywhere else.

Fedya bent Ilya over the bed and fucked him, sharp and fast and pointless. He came with an inartistic grunt, listening to Ilya’s fast breathing and the sound of his own heart. He never thought of anyone but Anatole. Fedya pulled out, panting, and looked down at Ilya. The boy lay back on the bed and closed his eyes, exhausted. The fuck, like Fedya’s grip on Ilya’s mouth, had been harder than he’d meant it.

How had he ever thought this would satisfy him? It was pathetic. He was pathetic.

“Is there anything else you want, monsieur?” the boy said, without opening his eyes.

Fedya buttoned the fly of his trousers. His hands were shaking, which made it more difficult than it should have been. “No,” he said. “Nothing you can give me.”

He averted his eyes, staring down at his boots. To his own disgust, he realized he’d never taken them off. Burning, he tore down the steps of the house and into the street. Though it was too far away for this to be possible, he thought he could see the lights of Hélène’s party, hear the swell of violins, feel the brush of Anatole’s hand against his cheek.


	8. Consummation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the author is softly whispering "Get it, Natasha" from behind her laptop.

No one had parties like this in the country. A strain of music soared from the ballroom into the front hall of the Bezukhovs’ home, where Natasha stood with her shawl wrapped close around her. It was like Olympus, she thought, something divine and beautiful. A servant appeared behind her and removed her shawl. She smiled her thanks. The cool air swept across her bare arms and shoulders. She shivered.

Natasha was late, to her own mortification. Hélène had been so kind, so solicitous, that Natasha should have been the first one there, if only to properly show her gratitude. But preparing had taken longer than she thought. She’d tried on six different dresses before settling on this one. She couldn’t come to the Bezukhovs’ looking like a child, an innocent country girl who’d never seen the world. It had been worth the effort, she thought, consulting the mirror in the front hall. She looked mature and enchanting in silver gauze and chiffon, a single white flower tucked behind her ear.

She laughed at her own reflection. It looked so little like her, and yet exactly how she’d wanted to look. She didn’t look like little Natasha Rostova. She looked like a confident woman who belonged here among this swirling elegance. She looked like she had an invitation.

She looked like a _Natalie_.

Satisfied, she left the mirror and approached the servant at the ballroom door, a towering fellow whose job it was to announce guests as they arrived.

The servant smiled down at Natasha, his eyes dark and kind. “And how may I present you, miss?” he said.

“Countess Natalya Ilyinichna Rostova,” she said.

The servant nodded, then looked behind Natasha, as if looking for her chaperone. If that was his aim, he’d be searching a long time. Natasha had shaken off the hovering presence of Marya Dmitrievna on the pretense that Pierre Bezukhov would be present at the ball. That kind, sweet man would watch over Natasha and see she came to no harm. Marya, distracted, agreed. Sonya had come down with a fever after church, and despite Marya’s lukewarm feelings toward Natasha’s cousin, she had not left her bedside all day. Getting Natasha out from underfoot was only to be wished. And who could be more trustworthy than Pierre?

Of course, Pierre would not be attending. Hélène had been quite clear that though the ball would take place in Pierre’s house, Pierre was not invited, and had no wish to be. Natasha had failed to mention this to Marya.

She entered the ballroom, the servant’s voice ringing her name behind her.

The room was elegant yet tasteful, high-ceilinged yet intimate. Thick velvet curtains had been pulled back from the windows to let the night envelop the room. Candles, everywhere, a dim gilded light. The sound of violins and guitars, soft and romantic.

And there.

There, by the room’s far door, stood Anatole.

He grew more handsome every time Natasha saw him. She didn’t know how this was possible. He wore a royal blue waistcoat and daring white trousers that made Natasha stare, then blush for staring, then continue to stare. The candlelight made his perfect white-blonde hair soft, luminous. Anatole had looked directly toward her when the servant announced her name. It was as if he’d waited to hear the words _May I present the Countess Natalya Ilyinichna Rostova_ for hours, days, all his life. His eyes drank her in now still, his attention unwavering. As though he would paint her.

_Natalie,_ Anatole had written, _I long to see you. I burn to see you again. I must see you, or I will die, God as my witness, Natalie, I will. Come to the ball tonight, please. I want nothing more than that._ Reading his words, and rereading them, and rereading them again, Natasha had feared him to be insincere. Seeing him in person, she believed he meant every word.

“Natasha, my dear,” Hélène said, greeting Natasha at the door.

Countess Bezukhova looked a wonder—what was it about the Kuragins that made them grow more beautiful by the day? Hélène kissed Natasha on both cheeks. Natasha flushed with pleasure. This was the welcome she’d dreamed of from Princess Mary. She’d only met Hélène and Anatole’s father once, briefly, at the Naryshkins’ in Petersburg the year before. The tall, gray-haired man was a little stiff, a little formal, and had said little to Natasha. But Count Rostov spoke highly of Prince Vasily Kuragin, as a man of excellent breeding and even better sense. The stark opposite of mad old Prince Bolkonsky. This was a family she could belong to, Natasha thought, curtseying before Hélène. A father. A sister. She thought the word again, _sister_ , and smiled.

“I’m grateful for the invitation, Countess,” Natasha said.

Hélène waved a hand, as if to say _not at all_. “It wouldn’t be a party without you, my love. But I won’t keep you,” Hélène said, with a wry smile, as if she and Natasha shared an intimate secret. “If I detain you a minute longer, I think my dear brother might die.”

Natasha’s heart trembled. Anatole, she thought, and didn’t know or care how the phrase finished. What did it matter what came after that?

Hélène laughed, noticing, and tapped Natasha playfully on the shoulder with her fan. “ _Allez_ ,” she said, and shooed Natasha like a chicken. “To your happiness, my dear.”

She swept away into the crowd, playing the role of hostess with flawless grace. Natasha, emboldened by Hélène’s tacit permission—they liked her, they wanted her here, Anatole had spoken to his sister of her—wove through the crowd toward the other side of the ballroom.

Anatole met her midway, at the rim of the parquet where Moscow’s finest couples whirled through the figures of a dance. “You came,” he said.

“You made a compelling invitation, Prince Anatole,” she said.

He smiled, that bold, tender smile. Natasha shivered. “ _Vous êtes trop genereuse_ , Countess Natalya,” he said, with a gentle teasing pressure on the title. “All I had to offer was this.” He spread his arms slightly to indicate himself, his trim waist, his long legs, those breathtaking trousers. If this was him being modest, Natasha thought, it left something to be desired. But she didn’t want modesty from him. From someone as good-looking as Anatole, modesty of any description was dishonest.

“As I said.” Natasha smiled. “Compelling.”

Anatole blinked. Confused, maybe, that she was being so clear. He’d have to catch up, Natasha thought. Anatole wasn’t the only person who could telegraph desire across a room. She had long since decided what she wanted. And she knew how to get it. She’d caught Andrey with a single dance, hadn’t she?

But she would not think about that now.

“My sister warned me my letter was too forward,” he said cautiously. “I hope I didn’t—”

Natasha took both his hands in hers. His handsome lips opened in surprise, all thoughts of the rest of his sentence long gone. His hands were narrow but strong, smooth, and so warm.

“Are you engaged for the next dance?” Natasha asked. “Or are you mine?”

It might have been an unfortunate choice of words, but she didn’t care. Andrey was nothing compared to this man. This man whose hands she held in hers. This man who wanted her.

Anatole bowed like royalty and brushed his lips against the back of her hand. “If you want me, _ma chère,_ I’m yours,” he said.

“For the dance,” she said, though she was not at all sure why.

“Yes,” he agreed, though she didn’t believe him. “For the dance.”

Natasha had only been to one other proper ball, at the Naryshkins’, the winter in Petersburg when she had met Andrey. A rapturous night. But as Anatole led her to the center of the parquet, Natasha realized that rapture was relative. And this was beyond anything. The orchestra had shifted into a fast Viennese waltz, lingering and beautiful, led by the solo voice of a wistful violin. Natasha wondered if Anatole had told the musicians to begin it when he took her hand. Or maybe Hélène had—the countess cared for Natasha and for her brother, wanted them to be happy, she’d said so. A caring sister, discretely meddling.

Anatole bowed, though his eyes never left hers. Natasha dipped a curtsey, then let Anatole take her in her arms, surrendering to him and to the music.

What a difference there could be, Natasha thought, between two men.

Andrey Bolkonsky was handsome, and refined, and modest. An excellent match, by all accounts. But there was always a vague irony behind his smile, as if no one but him could see the foolishness of dancing, of life. His touch had been chaste and professional. Andrey would make an excellent soldier, Natasha was sure. He danced like he fought campaigns: by the book.

Anatole must have been a disgrace on the battlefield, but he was a master in a ballroom.

Natasha felt immediately at home in his arms, one close around her waist, the other warm beneath her hand. He moved with perfect, careless grace, not thinking about any one movement, letting the music carry them forward. The dance was a whirling, giddy thing, pairs of couples turning through the rhythm. Close enough to feel his breath on her cheek. She could feel his heart beating fast, like hers.

“Anatole,” she said, and followed it with nothing.

He closed his eyes, as if the sound of his name had enraptured him.

She would have thought it madness, if it had been happening to other people. She had known Anatole two days. Spoken to him twice, once at the opera for twenty minutes, once in a church for three. Read one letter—read that one letter thirty times, but still, one letter. Was that enough, for a feeling like this?

Anatole had been quick to speak at the opera, his conversation idle and natural. In the waltz, he had nothing to say. He never took his eyes from Natasha’s. Never pulled his body away from hers. She felt as if she’d lost herself inside him, and he inside her, words useless against that senseless and dizzy blending. She knew him perfectly. She could have identified his soul, naked and shining, from among a thousand others.

Too soon, the musicians held the final shivering chord of the waltz, and the other couples on the parquet applauded politely. Anatole did not remove his hands from Natasha’s waist. She did not pull away from him. Her head spun from the tremor of the violins, the whirl of the dance, the endless depths of his eyes, glittering and tender.

She took his face in both her hands and kissed him.

He froze, stunned, for a full second, before his breath sighed out from him in a rush. He pulled her close, his lips gentle but urgent, and Natasha trembled with the taste of him. The orchestra had begun another number, but she did not hear it. Anatole’s cheek was smooth and warm beneath her hand. His soft hair gave easily as she curled her fingers into it. She hadn’t expected him to feel so real. An angel shouldn’t have felt like other men in her hands. She wanted to touch every inch of him, read the landscape of his body, understand what he was made of, this handsome apparition who had changed everything.

The orchestra was halfway through the ecossaise by the time Anatole broke away from Natasha. He looked out of breath and dazzled. Like a survivor of a shipwreck, staggering onto a strange new island. Natasha brushed her thumb across his mouth and saw him shiver. Had she kissed those lips? Had that been her?

Over Anatole’s shoulder, Natasha could see Hélène watching them from over the rim of a champagne glass. She toasted them silently, a smile in her eyes.

“Natalie,” Anatole murmured.

“I am engaged,” Natasha said.

But never mind about that now.

“I love you,” Anatole said, as if surprised by how much he meant it.

He did not wait for Natasha this time. He kissed her again, with a courteous assurance that left Natasha weak and desperate. Her lips parted, deepening the kiss until his tongue sent fire shuddering down her chest, into the secret and deepest parts of herself. She would kiss him all night, here in the middle of the ballroom, and to the devil with whoever saw.

Natasha heard Hélène’s voice from somewhere beyond Anatole. “Dear brother,” she said. “If I might.”

Anatole, occupied, did not respond.

Natasha heard a swift crack, and Anatole’s lips left hers. She opened her eyes. Hélène stood directly behind Anatole with her fan raised. Anatole had turned to glare at her and rubbed his shoulder with an affronted expression. Apparently Hélène had hit him with her fan. Natasha giggled. Everything seemed funnier now.

“It’s too crowded, isn’t it?” she said, looking at each of them in turn. “All this noise. You almost can’t have an intimate conversation here.” Natasha could hear the quiet subtext crackling through the words: _you two may run off to your happiness at all speed, and have my blessing, but do not give people reason to talk in the middle of my house._

Anatole took the hint. His hands trailed away from Natasha’s bodice, though he let them rest on her waist and did not remove them. “Quite,” he said. “Natalie, we could step outside…”

“It’s a cold night,” Natasha said. “Perhaps there’s a private room upstairs?”

Hélène stared at her, but Natasha did not remove her eyes from Anatole, whose growing smile looked like sunrise. Andrey was nothing. Her engagement was nothing. Virtue was nothing, a chain woven of denial by controlling old men who didn’t understand what love was, what this meant. She wanted Anatole Kuragin, and he wanted her, and if the only thing separating her from having him was a set of social rules and a disapproving God she’d never met, she would exile and damn herself this instant.

“Yes,” Anatole said. He looked ready to laugh, to cry out, to spin Natasha around into another dance. “A wonderful idea. Let me show you the house.”

Hélène looked at Anatole and smirked. Had she ever seen her brother quite like this, happiness boiling over in the curve of his smile? Natasha glowed, that she could have caused it.

“After you,” Natasha said. She took his arm, and he, startled back into a semblance of manners, held it like a gentleman. “Where you go, I follow.”

“ _Mon dieu,_ Toto,” Hélène said, smiling, as she spun away into the crowd. “You have found yourself a charmer.”

Anatole said nothing. His hand, holding Natasha’s, was warm and dry and trembled slightly. The ballroom’s attention elsewhere, he led her through the door, past the servant who watched them with eyes paid well enough not to judge, and up the darkened stairs, until the swell of the orchestra faded into the sound of their footsteps, the rasp of their breathing.

His legs were longer than hers. She had to take almost two steps for every one of his. He walked with the same confident stride that had carried him into the opera. With a glance back at Natasha—his face flushed, his eyes eager—he led her through an open door, into a well-furnished guest bedroom. His room, she supposed. She saw a sweep of paper covering the writing desk, half of the pages crumpled, the other half scribbled out. Rough drafts of the letter, she thought, and laughed. Well, he had gotten it right in the end. An oil lamp hummed in the corner, giving the space a curious underwater feel, like the hold of a ship. He pulled the thick curtains closed over the window. Natasha shut the door.

“Natalie,” Anatole said. His voice had gone hoarse, rough in the corners of his words.

“I’ve never done this,” she said honestly, knowing he wouldn’t mind.

“And you’re certain you want—” he began.

He faltered, for Natasha’s fingers already undid the buttons of his waistcoat, slipping it off his shoulders, untucking his shirt. He stood speechless. She liked him speechless as much as she liked his voice. He let her remove his shirt as though enchanted. She let the soft fabric fall aside, letting her heart tell her what to do, though her mind couldn’t fathom how she knew. Her hands skated across his tight belly, the ridges of his ribs, back to brush the ridge of his spine, along a long narrow scar, like a range of mountains, diagonal up from his hip. Her waist pressed against his, and she felt him rising with desire. She smiled.

He looked like a statue, she thought. Slender and pale and strong and ethereal, like an Apollo, a Paris. Where was he from, she asked herself, realizing she didn’t know. Where did they make men like this?

“Do I look uncertain?” she said.

“No,” Anatole murmured. “You don’t.”

His hands guided her into a slow twirl, until her back pressed against his bare chest, He kissed her, luxuriating in it, at the curve where her neck met her shoulder. His hands, all the while, managed the buttons of her gown. A rush of cold air trailed down her exposed spine.

Natasha let the gown fall to her heels, standing only in a thin slip. She sighed into his embrace, then turned to face him. Wanted to see him, his wide open eyes. She let the tip of one finger disappear behind the waist of his trousers, then two, then five, cupping his ass in one hand, pulling him closer. He almost purred at her touch. His eyes closed, his head tilting against his will toward the ceiling. Natasha smiled, shivering—was this all it took, was it so easy to please a man who wanted to be pleased? She had touched Andrey this way, this far at least, and he had never melted beneath her touch as Anatole did now.

“Don’t tease me, _ma chère_ ,” he breathed.

“I’m not,” she said. “But I need you to show me what to do.”

He laughed softly. His breathing was quick, those large eyes dilated and eager. “It seems you already know,” he said, leading Natasha to the bed, casting the slip away. “But it would be an honor. _Et un plaisir_.”

A pleasure, he said.

It was.

He lifted her in his arms, almost without trying, and lay her in the bed. His trousers were gone in a moment, and he was naked and perfect as a god, and Natasha pulled him to her, atop her, and kissed him like a miracle.

He was slow at first, gentle. A patient teacher, and a delighted one. He murmured soft instructions in her ear as he guided her hands, exploring her body with his mouth. Kissing her neck, her collarbone, then the peak of her breast, circling her nipple with the tip of his tongue, worrying it with his teeth, doing something absolutely magical with one hand between her thighs, found the spot perfectly in one and he wasn’t even looking, until she whined like a kitten and whispered for him to hurry, she was ready, and he laughed and kissed her lips before she could speak again.

Sonya always said it would hurt the first time. Not that Sonya would know. But Natasha had never believed her. This couldn’t hurt. Not when it was done right, by someone who cared enough to take his time.

Natasha gasped. Anatole’s handsome face blurred, rendered unclear and drifting from the trembling heat that filled her. She had only ever felt that kind of pleasure from her own fingers, long after Marya had gone to bed and with her own door shut tight, holding her breath to keep quiet. There was no reason to keep quiet now. She guided him, shifting him to where the heat was sharpest, and then whimpered, she felt the bed, the room, shudder. His face, above her, sharpened, sharpened as the feeling did, then exploded, a burst of light, clarity and shadow.

Everything sparkled.

The world had moved, and she with it.

She cried out, loud, in ecstasy and happiness and fear, and clung to him as if she would drown. As she returned to herself, panting and warm, she saw her future rising before her in the glittering depths of Anatole’s eyes.


	9. Preparation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which this is the textbook definition of a terrible idea, but at least both parties are 140% on board.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutout to the world's smallest Anastasia reference in this chapter; blink and you miss it. Also shoutout to my headcanon that Anatole would literally never wear pants at all if someone else didn't remind him to.

At the age of sixteen, Anatole had given his virginity to a local waitress with a pierced nose and a strong Ukrainian accent. A clumsy, halting affair in the courtyard behind the tavern, lasting maybe five minutes in total. He imagined, in hindsight, she’d been quite disappointed. He’d been an amateur then. Her name, he thought, might have been Darya. Or Diana. Maybe.

In the seven years following, Anatole had made love to no fewer than twenty-two people, twenty-two he could remember clearly, most likely a great number more. Bright-eyed girls just entering society. Women three decades his senior with quick wits and boring husbands. Working-class men with rough hands and gentle lips. Aristocratic second sons who came loudly and in French. Prostitutes and princesses, coach-boys and counts. He’d had them all, and thought of them fondly, if without affection.

But he knew Natasha was the best of any of them.

He lay beside her in his bed, the sheets crumpled down around their knees. Natasha had curled up against him, resting her head against his chest, between his ribs. He ran his fingers through her hair without thinking, small gentle circles along her scalp. She had wrapped one leg across his body, her perfect foot tucked softly beneath his knee. The curve of her inner thigh hovered dangerously close to his cock. It was driving him mad.

Anatole had not stopped smiling for twenty minutes.

He’d been the first lover of somewhere between seven and eleven people, though his memory on this score was somewhat foggy. It was an acquired skill, this, not unlike dancing or firing a pistol. The more you practiced, the better you knew the steps, the more accurate your aim. But though Natasha had been neither as acrobatic nor as daring as Anatole’s previous lovers, she hadn’t needed to be. Her pleasure, as she looked into his eyes, had been so pure, so honest, so surprised and delighted, that he forgot himself entirely. All he wanted was to fill her with that rush, to have her see that heaven, and to know that he’d taken her there. He came thirty seconds after she did, brought there by the pure, joyful wail that escaped her at the peak. They’d been here ever since, not speaking. Nothing to say.

She was engaged, of course. She’d told him that. But as Natasha gave a contented hum and nestled against Anatole, kissing his belly with a delicate nudge of her catlike tongue, this problem seemed incidental. Anatole sighed and felt his hand curl harder into Natasha’s hair. He forced himself to release it. It seemed a sin to hurt an angel, even if there would be pleasure for her in it.

“You make me feel so strange,” Natasha murmured.

Anatole laughed. “That’s not strange, _ma chère_ ,” he said. “That’s what that part does.”

“Not that,” Natasha said. She shifted atop him, her fine thighs one on either side of his hips, and kissed him on the brow, then on the cheek, then on the mouth. Anatole whined slightly as she pulled away, the curve of her against his hips too much to bear. Fedya used to kiss him this way, to stop Anatole talking. Anatole would happily never speak for the rest of his life, if it meant Natasha would kiss him that way again.

“What then,” he said, breathless.

“I’ve never done this,” she said. “Not with anyone. And I’ve never wanted to so badly, not even with him.”

A stupid rush of jealousy surged through Anatole. It felt like someone had taken his heart in an iron glove and crushed it. She was engaged, she’d told him that, she’d _told_ him. But any man who could win this goddess and then leave her behind didn’t deserve her. Anatole would challenge the scoundrel to a duel at sunrise. Shoot the wretch for the sin of abandoning Natasha, for taking this goddess for granted. If he’d been engaged to Natasha himself, he’d hold her to his chest and never let go.

He thought this with perfect sincerity, and believed it with all his heart, in the moment.

“Who is your fiancé?” he asked, lying back but propped up on his forearms, thinking of his pistol.

Natasha moved off him and sat up. She hugged her knees to her chest and tilted her head to one side. In the moonlight edging through the gap in the curtains, her body was intoxicating. Small, curved, so delicate. Her hair fluttered out of what had once been a chignon, until his attentions had ruined that. It ghosted around the flawless sweep of her neck, above the moonlit ledge of her collarbone, the curve of her calves.

He had to focus.

Anatole had to _focus_.

“He’s said I’m free to refuse him,” Natasha said.

Anatole could not focus.

He twisted in bed and kissed the smooth arch of her small, perfect foot. “And will you?” he said.

Natasha said nothing. Granted, Anatole was not giving her much opportunity. His lips caressed her heel, the ends of her toes, the delicate frame of her ankle. She’d frozen in surprise for a moment—this, no doubt, was not something her fiancé had taught her—before her breathing turned thick and her beautiful eyes closed. All the places a person could feel pleasure. All the wild and mundane and unexpected places. He wanted to teach them all to her.

Anatole didn’t remember deciding to do this. He didn’t remember deciding to do any of it. Natasha had bewitched him, she ruled him now, completely, and he didn’t mind. He would gladly surrender to her. And he felt her surrender in return as he softly parted her legs and kissed the inside of her thigh, just above the knee. She gripped his hair in both surprise and satisfaction.

“Yes,” she said.

All right, he thought, and edged upward, his tongue rhythmic and delicate, readily lapping up the taste of her.

Another thing her fiancé never taught her, it seemed.

She made a sound like a rabbit in a trap. He smiled and let his tongue circle its target, a fox circling that trapped rabbit, letting it wait for release. The best things in life took time. Her fingers dug into his hair until it hurt, in the best possible way.

“Yes,” Natasha said. “I refuse him, yes, Anatole, yes, there—”

Anatole raised his head from between her legs. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Don’t stop,” Natasha gasped.

Anatole sat back on his heels, looking at her wide-eyed. “Natalie, _ma belle_ ,” he said, and wiped his mouth with the back of his left hand. “You can’t say that and expect me to keep going.”

She would end her engagement. She had just promised to break it. She would be free, because she wanted him. How had this happened so fast? How had it happened at all? Natasha, sensing him beginning to flail, took his chin in one hand, softly holding his face to look at her. Her eyes were large and endless and steady. He found himself in those eyes, and liked what he saw.

“I love you,” she said. “I can’t marry him, because I love you. It’s that simple.”

When she said it, it did sound simple.

Natasha would leave her fiancé, and Anatole’s wife was four hundred miles away, and they were both as free as any two people in this mad and beautiful world.

“Marry me instead, then,” he said, without a single other thought in his head.

Now it was Natasha’s turn to stare.

“What?”

He rose from the bed, his clothes still scattered to the corners of the room, and began to pace. His steps felt like lead compared to the speed of his thoughts. Natasha’s eyes followed his body, to and fro, restless. It never occurred to Anatole that this might be the sort of conversation that required trousers.

“You’re free,” he said, speaking quickly now. “And I love you. I can’t live without you. So why should I?”

“My godmother will never allow it,” Natasha said. “My father won’t allow it. They think Andrey—”

The name of Natasha’s former betrothed sent another jolt of energy into Anatole’s pacing. He didn’t know the man, as far as he was aware. The four or five men of his acquaintance named Andrey were wretches or bores, and none of them worthy of Natasha. But giving the man a name at all was too much. Even abstracted and absent, this man, this Andrey would rob Anatole of his happiness. Natasha would be stripped away from him, forced to marry a man Anatole had never met, and who did not love her. The notion revolted him. It wasn’t fair, to have a saint and a ghost as your rival. You couldn’t fight back against someone like that. It was too cruel to be possible.

But Natasha had said _my father won’t allow it_. She had not said _no_.

“So run away with me,” he said, turning back to face her.

“Where would we go?”

This was still not a no.

“Poland. Prussia. France. Natalie, I don’t care, anywhere,” he said. He leaned forward, resting both his palms on the bed. He could not sit, his energy was too high for that. “We run away. Get married somewhere they’ll never find us. Andrey isn’t here, _ma chère_ , and he doesn’t matter, and neither does your father, or mine.”

Anatole could almost hear Hélène screaming in his ear as he spoke. _You stupid child, Toto, what are you doing? She’s betrothed. You’re married. You’ve known her two days. You’ll throw away your life, run away from everyone, ruin yourself for that?_

He would. No question.

Yes, he’d met Natasha two days ago, but he knew what he knew. People were married every day. Hélène and Pierre had been married to square up the Kuragins’ debts. His mother had been all but given to his father as a reward for distinguished military service. Anatole and Kataryna had been married at gunpoint.

He and Natasha would marry because they were in love. There were worse reasons than that.

As for his wife, well, she was in Minsk, and surely by now she hated him. Would be happy to get rid of him, however it happened. Few knew of her existence in Petersburg, fewerstill in Moscow, and abroad no one would know a thing. He’d atoned enough for that mistake. No God would be so cruel as to punish Anatole for the rest of his life because of one mistake.

“Can we go tonight?” Natasha asked.

Tonight? Immediately. At once.

“Yes,” Anatole said. He brought his hands to Natasha’s cheeks and kissed her, his heart soaring, jubilant.

Wait.

He broke the kiss, his hands still to Natasha’s face.

“No,” he said.

They would need money. They would need all manner of boring, practical, disgusting things. Love should have transcended petty logistical details; instead, it multiplied them. He stood again from the bed and pushed both hands through his hair, tilting his head back, thinking aloud.

“We need passports,” he said, addressing the ceiling more than Natasha. “Horses. A driver. Money. I need to find a priest. We need—”

“How long?” Natasha asked.

To the point. Natasha knew Anatole would deal with what needed to be dealt with. She trusted him. All she cared for was how long they needed to wait.

He wouldn’t disappoint her. He wouldn’t allow her to be disappointed.

Anatole thought. Passports? Simple. He’d spent enough time with whores and thieves to know a man who could whip up a forgery in a few hours. Dmitri was efficient, and if Anatole made his case convincingly he could have a set of good-enough travel papers in his palm by tomorrow noon. Horses, and a driver—

He laughed, though he was too wrapped in his own thoughts to tell Natasha why. God, when he told Balaga about this. The drunken fool would be delighted. His sophisticated young gentleman, tripping over his own heels to elope with a young woman to Poland in the middle of the night. The thrill of the story would be payment enough for him.

As for the money. Well. That would be a problem. Anatole had sixty rubles to his name, and that wouldn’t even scrape together passports. He couldn’t run away and start a new life with nothing. How would they manage? Natasha could hardly expect him to pick up a scythe and start mowing the fields like a peasant.

Pierre, he thought suddenly. He pressed one hand to his forehead, which felt burning hot beneath his palm. Pierre had mortally insulted Anatole. Accused him of brutalities and perversions no man on Earth could even consider. Anatole could use that. He could call in a favor. And Pierre was generous with his purse strings, even when the person doing the begging didn’t have the moral right to shoot him dead, which Anatole did. Surely the allegation that Anatole slept with his own sister was worth a few thousand rubles.

“Tomorrow night,” he said.

He’d have to work fast, but he could do that. Waiting any longer felt impossible. He would die if he didn’t have Natasha before then. This wasn’t melodrama, he really would die, he knew he would.

Natasha climbed out of bed, her expression calm and businesslike. She tugged her shift over her head—a display of modesty that Anatole, still trouserless and erect in the center of the room, found frustratingly unnecessary. She spoke, her voice faintly muffled through the thin fabric. “Marya goes to bed early,” she said, and tugged her head through the neck of the shift. “By nine, usually. So does Sonya.”

“I’ll come at ten,” Anatole said instantly, neither knowing nor caring who Sonya was.

“Come through the courtyard,” Natasha said. She picked up her gown from the floor, shook out the thin wisps of dust that clung to it, and stepped into the skirt, nudging the bodice up over her hips. “It’s sheltered from the neighbors. I’ll be on the back porch. And then—”

“My driver will be in the street,” Anatole said.

He knew what Natasha was doing. They had to return. The ball downstairs was intimate, small enough for the guests to notice when someone disappeared upstairs with a young woman and failed to come back at all. Especially Anatole, who was the brother of the hostess, and had a reputation for attracting attention. They had to put in an appearance, not raise suspicion. Pretend nothing had happened. The last thing they needed on their final day in Moscow was for someone to find out.

Their final day in Moscow. Anatole grinned and pulled his trousers back on. This time tomorrow, they would be on their way to Poland.

“Don’t forget,” she said. As if he could have. As if he would think about anything else until then. She turned her back to him, then peeked around her shoulder with a faint smile that made Anatole’s chest tighten. “Button me up, would you please?”

He did, taking his time about it. When he reached the top button, he leaned close, drinking in the scent of her, and kissed her neck until he heard her sigh.

“You go first,” he whispered against her neck. “I’ll follow later.”

“Ten tomorrow,” she said.

Anatole smiled. He stooped down and picked up one of Natasha’s shoes, which had been knocked under the bed in their haste. “Rely on me, Natalie,” he said, and handed it to her.

“I do,” she said, and left.


	10. Satisfaction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which I try to let Fedya be soft for like ten minutes, and then he goes and does this. (This is why we can't have nice things, Dolokhov.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: Don't do a dream flashback. It's cheap and distracting and it doesn't make any sense. Girl, don't do it.  
> Also Me: *does a dream flashback*

Fedya had started drinking the second he left the brothel. He kept it up until his watch told him it was three o’clock and the tavernkeeper told him he had to leave or the police would be involved. Then he stumbled back to his apartment, collapsing on top of his bed without pulling back the blankets. Outside the window, Moscow was silent.

He didn’t dream so much as remember.

#

The duel, in Petersburg, last year, outside the club. The stupid one. The only one he’d ever lost.

Anatole had been Pierre’s second, though after that much vodka Fedya suspected Anatole’s utility with a pistol was limited at best. He’d sat on the ground in the dirt, outside the club, his face flushed with drink and the evening chill. Leaning back on his hands, watching.

“Jesus Christ, Fedya,” he said, almost a laugh. “This is stupid, even for you.”

It was, of course. Stupid. From his perspective. Pierre Bezukhov, challenging Fedya to a duel over Hélène’s honor. As if Pierre could hold a gun straight. As if Hélène cared about either of the men dueling for her. As if Fedya and Anatole hadn’t just finished fucking loud enough to frighten the neighbors, not two hours before.

But to Fedya, it wasn’t stupid. Drunk but lucid, he had worked out the conclusion for himself in moments.

Pierre had accused Fedya of sleeping with Hélène. Hélène, who Anatole loved more than anyone. Anatole, who Fedya would do anything for. Fedya, who would defend anything Anatole loved. Who could shoot better than any man in Petersburg, better than most of them in Russia. Even when drunk. Even when _this_ drunk.

But then Fedya missed.

And then Pierre didn’t.

Anatole screamed.

Sober in a second. Staring at the blood seeping through Fedya’s shirt. His mouth was open, but after the scream, which cut itself off in half a second, nothing else came out. Only a breath of air, one Fedya could hear through the rushing of his own heart.

Fedya hadn't felt pain, at that point. He felt nothing, saw nothing, as the edges of his vision faded, as unconsciousness threatened. Nothing but Anatole, whose breath Fedya could no longer hear, nothing but the echo of the scream.

It was the only time Fedya ever felt Anatole take him seriously.

It was the only time Fedya ever felt Anatole loved him.

That, and the next day.

When Fedya awoke, he was in his own bed, and Anatole was sitting on the floor. Leaning his back against the leg of it, looking at nothing in particular. Fedya, coming to slowly, wondered if he’d slept at all. It didn’t seem so. Anatole certainly hadn’t been home, anyway. He wore the same clothes as the night before, shirtsleeves crumpled, pushed past his elbows.

Fedya hissed in pain, reaching to his shoulder. It had been bandaged—too well for Anatole to have done it himself. He must have called for a doctor. Fedya’s whole body felt stiff and fragile. At least Pierre wasn’t a better shot. Six inches to the left, and, well. This, he could manage. He’d had worse in the war. Moving would be difficult, though, for days. And it would leave a scar. Only a little one.

In a second, Anatole was sitting on the bed at Fedya’s side. His hip brushed Fedya’s good arm. Fedya couldn’t decide if Anatole had been crying, or if the curious shade of blue in his eyes was a consequence of the late night. The latter, he assumed.

“Good morning,” Fedya said. His voice was rough, but the wry note in it seemed to give Anatole permission to cross from afraid to relieved to annoyed.

“God, Fedya,” Anatole snapped. “Why? Really.”

Fedya grunted slightly as he sat up, leaning back against the headboard. It hurt, hurt like hell, but he hated lying down like an invalid in front of Anatole, powerless, pathetic. “I was defending her honor, Tolya,” he said.

Anatole flung both his arms out wide and left them spread there, palms out. Looking at him, Fedya was reminded of an exasperated Christ. “It’s Hélène, you ass,” he said. “She doesn’t _have_ any honor. And neither do I.”

Fedya laughed, though that hurt too. “I’ll remember that.”

Anatole bit his lip and looked down. He took Fedya’s hand and pressed it in his, then brought it to his lips and kissed it. In that moment, Fedya knew Anatole had been crying. He was moments from crying himself. But he wouldn’t. Not in front of Anatole. He was stronger than Anatole was. He would not cry. He would not.

“I never thought he’d hit you,” Anatole said.

"I didn't either."

“If I knew, I’d have stopped him.”

Fedya suspected this was a lie. But it was a lie he wanted to believe. It was easier not to ask questions. To lie here, still dizzy from pain, half-awake, with Anatole holding his hand like that, and believe it.

“Do you want me to stay?” Anatole asked, circling Fedya’s palm with his thumb.

Fedya said nothing. But he moved, almost without realizing, to make space in the bed for two.

Without asking again, Anatole curled up beside Fedya, careful to avoid the damaged shoulder. Fedya sighed as Anatole’s body warmed him, chased away the chill of blood loss.

Fedya couldn't speak gently. Couldn't be kind. His desire always spilled over into pain, rough and sharp, like bullets, but he couldn't help that, that was war. He saw them, even then, the bruise on Anatole's neck, the yellow discoloration on his wrist. New from the night before. Just a few hours ago, though it felt like a lifetime. He hadn't meant to do it. It just happened. Feelings he didn't understand, desire he couldn't show any other way, want he wasn't strong enough to master.

Anatole liked it, Fedya knew that for a fact. Anatole wasn't the type to let you guess whether he liked something you were doing. But it wasn't how he did things. Wasn't how he loved, if he did love. If Fedya was a closed fist, Anatole was two open hands, taking everything he was given, giving everything he had.

They’d never really understood each other. But that moment, lying there together, it felt, almost, like both of them were trying.

With hesitant tenderness, Fedya kissed Anatole on the top of his head, then pulled him to his uninjured side. Anatole gave a contented little hum, like a cat in sunlight, and nestled closer.

“I’ll be all right,” Fedya said. “It’s nothing.”

Anatole smiled and pressed another soft kiss to Fedya’s hand. “You were shot, _mon cher,_ ” he said. The resonance of his voice vibrated through Fedya’s chest. “You’re allowed to tell me it hurts.”

#

Fedya didn't quite know when he fell asleep, what parts of his thoughts were memory and what parts dream. But when he awoke, it was early afternoon. He lay in bed alone. Sunlight stabbed him directly in the eyes. And Hélène Bezukhova stood over him, shaking his shoulder as if the house were on fire.

He swore and buried his head under the pillow. He didn’t know what time it was, and didn’t care to know. He hadn’t had such a hangover since after Austerlitz, when he’d matched Major Denisov drink for drink until the sun rose. He’d thrown up for two full hours after that. This, somehow, felt worse. God, why did he drink so much last night?

Then he remembered why he drank so much last night.

“Go away,” he said, from beneath the pillow.

“Get up, Dolokhov,” Hélène said. She jerked the pillow out of Fedya’s hands and threw it to the floor.

The sunlight through Fedya’s closed eyelids was hell. He sat up, preparing to snarl something vicious in her direction.

Then he took a closer look at her face.

Hélène was a disaster. Her hair, far from its usual flawless coif, hung in a wild frizz around her head, as if she’d run the full distance to Fedya’s apartment. Her skirt had trailed in the snow and dripped filthy water on the floor. Those eyes, the same rich blue as Anatole’s, were wide, almost wild. Hélène Bezukhova was unflappable and imperturbable. Napoleon might set fire to Moscow and she’d still make time to put on her pearls before fleeing the city. If she left the house looking like this, something terrible had happened.

Fedya rose from bed, pushing down the wave of nausea that crested in his stomach. “Christ, Hélène, what—”

“It’s Anatole,” she said.

Fedya sat down again. Of course it was. What else was it ever?

Pushing the dream aside, Fedya remembered what he’d decided last night, somewhere between drunk and drowned. He was finished with Anatole. He would have nothing more to do with that absurd, preening idiot. It sounded like a brilliant idea at the time. Loving Anatole never brought him anything but pain. Slamming down one empty shot of vodka on the bar and calling for another, he felt liberated. Now, looking at Hélène, he knew he’d been lying to himself.

Her eyes were Anatole’s exactly. Even looking at them in someone else’s face twisted his heart. Anatole had him bewitched. Fedya would do anything to see those eyes again, to have them look at him with more than casual affection, to look at him with love, devotion. He was as trapped now as he’d been the night of the duel, firing at a man he barely knew for the honor of a woman he didn’t love, because of Anatole. He couldn’t leave even if he wanted to.

“What has he done now?” Fedya asked.

Hesitation looked strange on Hélène. She looked down at her feet. Actually wrung her hands, like a character fallen off the stage and into real life. Damn it, Fedya thought. If Hélène was afraid to tell him what Anatole had done, she should have thought of that before she woke him up and demanded he listen.

“He’s going to elope,” Hélène said.

Fedya stared.

“With Natasha Rostova,” she finished.

Fedya took his head in his hands.

“Of course he is,” he said.

Anatole was married. Anatole had Fedya. He had someone who would treasure him above anything else in this world, who loved him more than life, more than anything. And what did he decide to do? Elope with a stranger, who was already engaged to someone else. Fedya felt the vomit rise again. He wanted to ask Hélène to repeat herself, in the faint hope that he’d misheard. But of course he hadn’t. It was too much exactly the kind of stupid, reckless, childish thing Anatole would do.

Hélène began to pace the room, back and forth, her shoes clicking against the floor. In that moment, she looked exactly like Anatole. That same frantic energy. Anxiety drove the Kuragins into motion. It kept Fedya pinned to the bed, trapped. Picturing Anatole and Natasha together, Anatole’s fine hands caressing the stupid girl, his lips against her stupid lips, his body nude and entwined with her stupid body. Fedya retched, but swallowed. The nausea had nothing to do with the hangover.

“He spoke to Pierre this morning,” Hélène said. “Asked for money, which my husband, like an idiot, gave to him. Ten thousand rubles.”

Fedya choked. “Pierre gave him ten thousand rubles,” he repeated, then said it again. “Ten thousand. To Anatole.”

A man couldn’t quite buy Moscow with ten thousand rubles, but he could certainly pick up a smaller city for that price. Kostroma, say. Smolensk.

“Pierre owed him a favor,” Hélène said, with bitterness Fedya didn’t understand. “I asked, and Toto didn’t deny it. They’re leaving for Poland tonight. He’s promised to take her from her house at ten.”

“Tonight?”

Fedya couldn’t think quickly enough to come up with his own sentences. He could do nothing but echo Hélène. As if hearing the words in his own voice would change the truth of them. Anatole meant to abscond to Poland that night. Was he planning on telling Fedya? Or was Fedya meant to wake up the next morning and find out along with the rest of Moscow?

As if he was no one. As if Anatole didn’t care.

“Unless you can stop them,” Hélène said. She stopped pacing and stared at him with those deep blue Kuragin eyes.

Fedya shook his head, though who knew what he was disagreeing with. His hangover was forgotten. He had never felt more awake. Anatole Kuragin must have been the most foolish man in Russia. They’d arrest him, have him hauled before the magistrate, throw his stupid handsome face in prison and leave him there to rot. Fedya pulsed with anger, starting in his palms and spreading through his veins upward. Anatole would deserve it. For deciding his own fleeting happiness outweighed everything else. Outweighed his sister’s peace of mind. Outweighed Natasha’s reputation.

Outweighed Fedya.

“You think I can stop him?” he said with a laugh, and flung himself backward on the bed. He stared at the ceiling, riddled with cracks and chipped plaster. “Hélène, I couldn’t convince him to put on a coat in the middle of a blizzard. Anatole doesn’t listen to me.”

“I don’t care,” Hélène said. “You know him better than anyone. You have to stop this. Because if you don’t, my family will be shamed, my stupid husband will be ruined, my brother will be arrested and I will not let that happen, Dolokhov, I will not.”

Fedya was hardly listening, at this point.

Had Anatole always been this way? He couldn’t have been. There must have been a moment, one single moment, when Anatole had loved him. Fedya wasn’t so pathetic as to give his life to someone else without any hope. There must have been.

He closed his eyes, realizing it as if for the first time.

Yes, Anatole had always been this way.

It was exactly the same, every time.

Only three days ago, Fedya had been where Natasha was now. The lover, the idol, the favorite. The toy of a moment. Fedya wondered who he’d replaced, when Anatole had fallen for him. Who came before him, in this never-ending parade of lovers? Who had Fedya stolen Anatole from, without realizing he’d done it?

What poor idiot hadn’t fought back, when they felt it all falling apart?

It was like someone had lit a lamp in Fedya’s brain. Moments before, everything had been tangled together, love and fear and loathing. Now, the world shone with bright clarity. He knew exactly what he had to do. He sat up and reached for his shoes, which he’d managed to kick off before collapsing the night before. Hélène went very quiet. She could see that he’d decided, but didn’t know what.

“Don’t worry,” Fedya said. He stood up and took Hélène’s hand in his. His face, he hoped, looked sincere. He pulled on his coat and wrapped a knit scarf around his neck. It was cold as the very devil that morning. He could feel it from the draft sneaking around the window.

“Where are you going?” Hélène asked.

“To take care of it,” Fedya said, and left.

Fedya walked fast, his head down. The last thing he wanted was to meet someone he knew in the streets this early in the morning. A moment’s distraction and he would lose his resolve. He had to do this, he thought, bounding up the stairs to the stately house on Nikitsky Boulevard and pounding three times on the door. And he had to do it now, while there was still time.

After a moment, a servant opened to Fedya’s knock. The man was as tall and stately and massive as the house itself. A hulking monster of a man. Gavrilo, Fedya thought, Marya’s manservant. He’d heard the old woman screaming at him in the past—craning his neck to look the man in the face, Fedya wondered how she dared. It would be like shouting at Ajax. Gavrilo looked down his Roman nose at Fedya, seemingly asking himself what such a disreputable-looking roustabout was doing making social calls at this hour of the day.

“May I assist you, monsieur?” he asked, with as much condescension as it was possible to pack into the word _monsieur_.

Fedya straightened his back, as if reporting for duty at the front. “Please tell Marya Dmitrievna that Captain Fyodor Dolokhov needs to speak to her,” he said. “On a matter of great importance.”

Gavrilo raised his graying eyebrows toward his receding hairline, but ducked back into the house in search of his mistress. Fedya shifted his weight first to one side, then the other. He had stopped thinking. His mind hummed with the vibrating calm that came after a mortar shell. It was cold as anything, standing there on the porch, but he barely felt it.

Finally, Marya appeared in the doorway. She did not open the door all the way, nor did she invite him in. She had dressed in a severe black crepe gown with a bright purple shawl wrapped around her shoulders. The overall effect was that of a Mother Superior blended with a medieval executioner. She looked at Fedya through narrowed eyes.

“If you mean to rob the house, Captain Dolokhov,” she said, “you might have done so without informing me.”

“I need to speak with you,” Fedya said. “In private.” Seeing the way her eyes lingered on his hands, still in his coat pockets, he took them out and spread his fingers wide. “I promise not to shoot,” he added wryly.

Marya paused, then sighed, as if to say _if he kills me, at least this scoundrel will be strung up as a murderer._ She stepped out onto the porch and closed the door. Wrapping the shawl tighter around her, she waited.

Fedya hesitated. A voice in the back of his mind whispered that he shouldn’t do this, that it was a mistake, betrayal, that it was the cruelest thing under heaven he could do.

But then, he thought of Anatole. Anatole in bed beside him bathed in sunlight, his head resting against Fedya’s chest, bleeding still, a wound Fedya would never have received if not for him. Anatole walking with his head held high down the aisle of the opera, stopping in the middle of the floor to look at Natasha with those wide innocent eyes. Two stupid children, neither of whom had ever understood that actions had reactions, that decisions had consequences. _Mais charmante_. And back in Fedya’s room, after. _Enchanting. Extraordinary. Have you met her?_

Fedya couldn’t remember a moment when loving Anatole hadn’t hurt him. And for all that time, under the surface, he had wanted to hurt Anatole in return. Show him that Fedya Dolokhov was not a man to be toyed with. Fedya was a soldier, a captain, and a damned good one too. He dominated others. They did not dominate him.

If Fedya Dolokhov could not have Anatole Kuragin, then damn it, nobody could.

“Marya Dmitrievna,” he said, “if you want to save your goddaughter’s virtue, you will listen very carefully to what I’m about to say.”

Marya gaped. For a long moment, she said nothing. Then, Fedya saw belief rise like the sun in her eyes. A smart woman, Marya. She’d lived in this wild, cruel world twice as many years as Fedya had. Too much experience not to have suspected. When she spoke, her question was simple and direct.

“Who?”

Fedya thought again of Anatole’s scream, when the bullet thudded into his own shoulder. As if Anatole knew what it meant to be hit.

Go to hell, Fedya thought, then gritted his teeth, then spoke.

“Anatole Kuragin.”


	11. Abduction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Marya is old-school and the baddest bitch in Moscow.

Marya sat in the parlor, wearing her housecoat and a thick woven shawl, and watched the back window. The street outside was dark at this hour of the night. Nikitsky Boulevard was in a sleepy, respectable corner of town, where nothing exciting ever happened and the residents went to bed promptly at half past nine. In her youth, Marya would have loathed living in such a boring street. But at fifty-two, the silence soothed her. One could sleep more easily in quiet. One could read without interruption, enjoy a friendly game of cards among loved ones without riotous youth shouting and firing pistols in the street.

One could hear a troika approaching from a quarter mile away, if one was listening.

The grandfather clock in the corner of the parlor had quietly tolled three-quarters past the hour a few minutes ago. Marya crossed her ankles under the chair, left over right. Her back remained rigidly straight, her attention rapt. In her lap, resting on the black sweep of her housecoat, sat her revolver. She ran a hand along the barrel, then back the other direction, rhythmically in time with the pendulum of the clock.

Her father always said that what separated real aristocrats from pretenders was that in the best families, the women could hunt as well as the men. Marya had spent endless dull afternoons trailing her father along the grounds of their estate, leveling rabbits and stoats while her brothers hunted boar. She’d hated it at the time. Loathed seeing the snow dyed scarlet with blood, hated the way the animals’ eyes would stay open and staring long after the twitching stopped. But she was a good shot, and on a nostalgic impulse, she’d kept the revolver.

For that, now, she was grateful.

Five minutes to ten.

Marya could hear soft movement from the floor above. Gentle footsteps, moving cautiously, but not toward the parlor. The back stairs, she thought with venom. After dark. As if the scoundrel were running off with a scullery maid. She gripped the barrel of the revolver tighter. Its coolness in her palm pleased her.

Ten.

Five after.

Quarter after.

Perhaps he wasn’t coming, Marya thought. After all, what did she have as a source of information? Fyodor Dolokhov, that disreputable infantry captain who spent his nights with bad vodka and worse whores. God alone knew how many reputations Dolokhov would ruin, if left to his own devices. It was hardly like receiving a tip from the local priest.

But the concern in Dolokhov’s eyes, that afternoon, had not been feigned. He couldn’t be that good of an actor. No one was. And while Marya wasn’t sure Natasha was stupid enough to run off with a man in the middle of the night, Kuragin was enough of a slut to try. Marya knew Anatole only slightly, but she was well acquainted with Hélène, thanks to her decade-old friendship with Pierre Bezukhov. If the brother were anything like the sister, she thought, an abduction like this was not beneath him in the slightest.

And then there was that last detail Dolokhov let slip.

“Anatole is my friend,” he had said, with a curious expression, as if _friend_ were not quite the word he meant. “I’m…I’m fond of him, though he’s a fool. If he were only trying to seduce the countess for a night, I don’t know that I would try to stop him.”

“Then why—”

“Because Anatole intends to marry Natalya,” Dolokhov said. “And he’s already married.”

Already married. Marya had been turning those words over in her head since the afternoon. They would not leave her, but resounded through the silence like a curse. Already married. She almost wanted the wretch to try it. She would teach him a thing or two.

As if God had answered her prayer, she heard the jingle of harnesses in the street, followed by a soft whistle. Footsteps followed on the stair a moment later.

Marya stood, moving to the back door. Another set of footsteps, this one from the street, but coming closer. Quiet, barely audible even in the dead hush cloaking the night. If Marya hadn’t been listening, she wouldn’t have heard. For the first and likely last time in her life, she said a silent prayer of thanks for Fyodor Dolokhov. The interloper’s tread reached the porch, then turned, toward the back stair, where Marya heard a soft gasp, and a sigh.

Not in my house, you bastard, Marya thought.

She turned on the gas lamp, flooding the room with light. The footsteps outside froze, startled. Lunging on their indecision, Marya flung open the door, leveling the revolver squarely at the intruder.

Natasha screamed.

Anatole made no sound. He held Natasha in his arms, his back to the door, standing there on the porch. Marya could see nothing but the lean sweep of his back, clad in a dark green coat, and the vibrant shock of his white-blonde hair. Ruffled out of place, even for him. As if Natasha had carded her fingers through it. He stood deathly still. Holding onto Natasha, as if her body could stop this, turn back time and let them try again.

Then, slowly, he stepped back from Natasha, who whispered “no” so softly Marya almost didn’t hear it.

He turned.

His face paled as he stared down the barrel of the revolver, which Marya now aimed dead between his eyes.

He raised his hands, palms outward. In the light spilling through the doorway onto the porch, he looked very pale indeed. Natasha was pressed close behind him, one hand at his waist. In the distance, Marya heard the clatter of horses taking off again into the night. His driver, hearing the scream, had abandoned him. No loyalty among wretches and thieves.

“Good evening, Anatole Vasilyevich,” Marya said, her voice as level as the revolver. “Won’t you come inside?”

“Tolya, run—” Natasha began, nudging him with her shoulder.

“Tolya, is it?” Marya said. She kept her voice down—no reason for the neighbors to know—but the cold laugh beneath her words would cut at any volume. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten you, horrid girl. Kuragin, if you run, I will shoot you, and I will enjoy it very much. Now get inside.”

Anatole looked over his shoulder at Natasha, his eyes still owl-wide. She shook her head, still clinging to him in that way that set Marya’s teeth on edge. Then, biting his lip but not saying a word, he walked past Marya into the parlor. The swagger had melted from his walk. He moved like a convict now.

Marya turned as he moved. She never took the barrel of the revolver from between his eyes. Natasha followed him in as if sleepwalking. Marya slammed the door behind her, then locked it.

The words spilled out from her like a barrage of gunfire. Marya hardly knew what she was saying, but that did not matter. She would destroy this man, she would tear him to pieces. He had tried to kidnap her goddaughter, to deceive her, to rape her, to ruin her. Marya would rip him limb from limb with her own hands if she could.

“You vile, creeping worm of a man,” she shouted—no care for the neighbors now, what went on behind closed doors was her own business. “You shameless dog, you rat, you filth, you wretch.”

Without realizing it, Marya had backed Anatole against the wall. The barrel of her revolver now dug hard into his chest. They were inches apart now. She could almost feel his black heart beating through the metal. He still had not said anything. She wanted him to speak. Wanted to hear the voice of the man who would ruin Natasha.

“You thought you could escape?” she snarled, digging the revolver deeper into him until he flinched. “You thought you could carry her off like one of your gypsy girls, your whores? You ought to hang. You’re not worth the air you breathe.”

“He’s worth more than you,” Natasha said. She grabbed Marya by the shoulder and dragged her back, away from Anatole.

Marya stumbled back, stunned. She stared at Natasha. So did Anatole.

“Please,” Anatole began, though no one knew what he was asking, least of all himself. He brought a hand to his chest, unconsciously, the side of his fist pressed to the place where the gun had been.

The door to the parlor opened. Marya barely looked. Sonya had been roused by the noise and burst into the room, hair plaited, wearing a long woolen housecoat. On her heels followed Gavrilo, fully dressed and alert. They stared.

Natasha turned to look at them. Her voice rose toward hysterics. “Sonya, did you tell—”

“I didn’t know,” Sonya stammered, staring from Natasha to Anatole and back to Natasha.

“Gavrilo,” Marya said calmly, as if this were an everyday occurrence. “Run and fetch an officer of the law, if you would. Tell them Marya Dmitrievna has a kidnapper and a criminal in her parlor.”

Gavrilo was too stunned to bow. Staring at Anatole with wide colorless eyes, he backed from the parlor, closing the door behind him.

“Kidnapper?” Natasha repeated in disbelief. “He’s not kidnapping me. I love him.”

“Natalie,” Anatole said quietly, warning her.

Natasha looked at him, eyes wide. He shook his head, just a hair. Be careful, the movement said. She took his hand, and he held it tight, steady against her trembling fingers.

He still dared to touch her. He dared to call her Natalie. He would look at her with bold, unapologetic tenderness, in Marya’s house, with a pistol to his chest. Marya would kill him, here and now, and take pleasure watching his blood stain her carpet.

“I told him to come,” Natasha said, still holding his hand. “I’m leaving with him tonight.”

“You will do nothing of the kind,” Marya snarled.

She pushed Natasha away and shoved the barrel of the revolver under Anatole’s chin, forcing his head back, exposing his throat. Behind her, Marya saw Sonya step forward to embrace Natasha, who was now crying audibly. Natasha escaped her cousin’s embrace with a ringing laugh through her tears. Marya could hear Anatole’s breathing coming shallow and fast. His back against the wall. Her revolver at his throat. His eyes still, still, always on Natasha. Marya dug the revolver harder, until the back of his head touched the wall.

She wanted him to look at _her._

“You had Andrey Bolkonsky,” Marya said to Natasha. Anatole flinched, as though he had never heard the name before. Marya, sensing a weak point, dug in. “You had the finest man in Russia. A gentleman. A prince. Every woman in Moscow wanted your match. And you would throw it away for this cockroach, this snake, this twisted creeping stain of a man?”

“Will you kill him?” Natasha asked. Something within her had snapped. Her voice came too high, too loud. Wild, just shy of a shriek, almost a laugh. “Will you shoot him, here, in front of everyone?”

“I should,” Marya said. “Didn’t he tell you, Natalya?”

Marya felt Anatole hold his breath.

“I know him,” Natasha said. “I love him. He’s told me everything.”

At last, Anatole met Marya’s eyes. Silent, not breathing, he shook his head, just enough for her to see. Begging her not to tell. Marya looked straight into his wide, frightened eyes and smiled.

She quite liked to see him begging. She liked ignoring his pleas better.

You see, now, my good man, she thought, that I am someone to reckon with.

“Did he tell you he’s married?” Marya said.

Silence.

Anatole stood motionless, as if the word had nailed him to the wall. The handsome, swaggering soldier they had seen at the opera was nowhere to be found now. The life had fled his eyes. In that moment, he looked very thin, and very pale, and very lost.

Natasha shook her head. She said nothing for a long moment, just stood there, shaking her head over and over. “He isn’t,” she said.

“He is,” Marya said. “To a Polish gentlewoman, another one he took advantage of and swore to love forever. He didn’t tell you that? He told you breaking _your_ engagement was enough?”

“Anatole,” Natasha said. She took a step closer to him, but made no attempt to touch him this time. Her eyes were the same wide, glassy black as a rabbit’s bleeding out in the snow, though Anatole was the one at the end of the revolver. She was talking too much now, too quickly. Hiding behind the words that wouldn’t change anything. “It isn’t true. I don’t believe it. You said we would be married in Poland, that no one else mattered, that you loved me, you said. She’s lying. Tell me she’s lying.”

“Natalie, I…” he began.

It was not a no, and Natasha knew it.

She did not cry. She did not rage, beat him with her fists, tear at her hair. She stood there, staring at him, as though she had never seen him before in her life. As if she no longer knew who he was at all. As if his soul were unfamiliar.

He stood, taking in her gaze, taking everything in.

“Who told you?” he said to Marya.

She could have slapped him. That was the question he wanted answered?

“Fyodor Dolokhov,” she said. “A better man than I gave him credit for. He came today to warn me.”

Anatole’s mouth opened slightly. He looked to be on the verge of speaking, though he didn’t seem to know what he would say. Then, a soft rush of breath passed between his lips, and he closed his mouth without saying a word. Something in his eyes had shattered. Something within him had crumbled.

It gave Marya pleasure to see it.

“Fedya,” Anatole said, almost inaudibly, and to no one in particular.

Gavrilo opened the door, followed by two officers. They stormed into the parlor with the heavy tread of too-thick boots. The two men stared at the scene, wide-eyed and stunned. It wasn’t every day they came upon one of Moscow’s _grandes dames_ holding a morally bankrupt prince at gunpoint in her parlor. Well, never let it be said Marya Dmitrievna was not full of surprises.

“Gentlemen,” Marya said, not taking her eyes off the wretch. “Arrest Anatole Kuragin for the attempted kidnapping and violation of Countess Rostova.”

Anatole did not fight back as the officers took him by the shoulder, liberating him from Marya’s revolver. One of them grabbed Anatole by the wrists, wrenching his arms behind his back. Thin, almost ethereal as he was, Anatole was easy to restrain, easy to move. They strong-armed him through the parlor, moving him roughly enough that he stumbled. He threw one look back over his shoulder, his wide blue eyes empty, desperate.

“Natalie,” Anatole said.

Natasha still looked at the spot on the wall where he had been standing moments before. She did not answer.

Then the officers pushed Anatole through the door and out into the night.

Marya turned to Natasha, intending to say something comforting. Now that Anatole was out of the room, her rage had abated. A maternal instinct filled her—this was her goddaughter, who had escaped ruin by a hair, who was now in more need of comfort than ever.

“Natasha,” Marya said, and touched her on the cheek.

Natasha spat at Marya’s feet and ran from the room.


	12. Revulsion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Anatole really shouldn't be thinking things like "it could be worse."

Anatole gazed up at the ceiling of his cell. The bed was too short for him: apparently Butryka prison had been designed for criminals standing five foot nine and under. Instead, he lay on the stone floor, his feet flat and his knees up, hands folded behind his head. He had been in this cell for three days. In that time, he had not changed his clothes, had not bathed, had seen no one but the guard who brought food and water once daily. He had barely slept, a fact that had little to do with the pathetic dimensions of the bed.

He supposed he should be grateful. He’d seen what the rest of Butryka had to offer, as the guards marched him through the hall three days ago. Tiny holding cells with iron-barred doors, built for ten men and holding forty. The smell of piss, even from the corridor, had been incredible. He’d gagged, which made the guards laugh and shove him forward until he almost fell.

But there was something to be said for being a prince. Anatole had been locked in a private room, ten feet by six. The ceiling was barely seven feet tall, and the only light came from a tiny slash of a window, about the length and height of Anatole’s forearm. But it was private, and the only piss he could smell in this room was his own. It could have been worse.

Which was all for the best. Who knew how long he might be here. Three days without a word. The magistrate certainly seemed in no great rush to see him.

Anatole no longer cared much what happened to him. If he stayed in prison, very well, he would be in prison. Butryka was not the kind of place people escaped from. If he was released, Natasha’s family would have him run out of Moscow, if Count Ilya Rostov or Andrey Bolkonsky didn’t put a bullet between his eyes beforehand.

Well, he would spare them the trouble. He had no wish to stay in Moscow now.

The only thing that made the city bearable was Natasha. Natasha’s glittering eyes, her tender smile, her innocent laugh, the way she had clung to him as if he were the entire world. She was lost to him. Gone forever. Natasha hated him. He had seen the hate in her eyes clear as a knife when Marya spoke of his marriage.

His hands, still folded beneath his head, twitched, as if they'd form fists. He closed his eyes, loathing himself, silently screaming. You should have fought, he thought, not for the first time. You should have knocked the gun from Marya’s hand, should have bolted the second you saw Natasha on the stair. Should have denied Kataryna a thousand ways to Sunday and run off with Natasha into the night.

But in the moment, when it mattered, he’d frozen.

Marya would have shot him, no question about that. The old bat would have emptied her revolver into Anatole’s skull at the drop of a pin, and it would be the most fun she’d had in months.

It still made him a coward.

The door to the cell opened, but Anatole did not move. He could tell already who it was by the tread of the man’s step, by the sound of his voice, by the fact that nobody else in the prison had come to see him in three days. The same guard, his vibrant mustache winging outward in three dimensions as if to compensate for the thinning hair on his head.

“Visitor for you, Prince Lothario,” said the guard from the doorway.

Anatole closed his eyes in a sort of extended wince. Someone should make it illegal for prison guards to have a sense of humor. When they finally dragged him out of here to trial, he would bring that up to the magistrate.

“Tell them the prince is not receiving,” he said.

“Tolya,” said another man’s voice from the door.

Anatole opened his eyes and turned his head to the door without sitting up.

Honestly, he thought, seeing who had spoken. This was what he deserved, for thinking a stupid sentence like _it could have been worse._

“You have fifteen minutes,” the guard said. “I’ll come back for you then.”

“Thank you,” Fedya said to the guard. He stepped inside, allowing the guard to shut the door, closing Anatole and Fedya in the cell together.

Anatole remained lying on his back, his head turned toward the door and his cheek resting against the stone. He had no intention of moving or speaking. If Fedya didn’t work up the nerve to say something himself, this was shaping up to be a long fifteen minutes.

Fedya hovered near the door. Anatole watched as he shifted his weight to one leg, then to the other. Fedya clearly had no idea what to do with his hands. His fingers drummed against his thigh in nothing resembling a regular rhythm. It reminded Anatole of when they first met, years ago now, on opposite sides of a Petersburg gambling table. Fedya had been just as handsome then, just as striking. His thick black hair had been just as pristinely cut, his trim body as muscular and powerful, his fine eyes as dark and clever and audacious. He’d been just this uncomfortable, too. Gnawing at his lower lip, twisting that fine mouth into anxious shapes, eyes darting to Anatole and then, abashed, back away.

His hesitation had captured Anatole’s heart. How a man could be that beautiful, that striking, and still somehow wonder whether Anatole wanted to be in his company. The illogic of it charmed him.

Anatole had lost a tremendous amount of money that night. He’d stayed until well past two in the morning, burning through three hundred rubles of his father’s with terrible bet after terrible bet. Anatole was a disgrace of a gambler, but he’d been emboldened by the brilliant flash of Fedya’s eye, the whisper of a smile on his beautiful mouth, the faint flush that rose to his hairline when their eyes met. The losses had seemed worth it, then.

In Petersburg, Anatole had been thrilled by Fedya’s attention. Had fought for it, sighed over it, yearned for it. The ghost of that fondness still remained.

But now, in that moment, Anatole would have seen Fedya packed on the next train to Siberia, never to return, and he wouldn’t have blinked.

“I’m sorry I’m unprepared,” Anatole said, still lying on the floor. “Generally, I only take calls between three and five. That’s when the rats stop by.”

Fedya swore under his breath and sat on the edge of the bed. Out of Anatole’s line of vision. Damn him. With a tremendous sigh, Anatole sat up at last and pulled his legs into his chest, resting his chin on his knees. From this position—the most insolent pose he could strike in a prison cell—he regarded Fedya with eyes purposefully wiped blank. Fedya’s handsome face looked a wreck. Deep shadows ringed his dark eyes, and a series of three long scratches blossomed red on his right cheek.

Anatole nodded toward the scratches. “What happened?”

Fedya scowled. “Hélène,” he said.

Anatole smiled for the first time in days. “Sweet Hélène,” he said. The only person in this world he could count on without reservations.

“She visited last night,” Fedya said. “Went for the kill. I’m lucky she missed my eyes.”

Fedya was right. It was only luck that got him off without needing a surgeon. Hélène had never fired a gun before, but Anatole was sure she’d be game to try.

“Why are you here?” Anatole said. Scooting backward on the floor, he leaned his back against the wall. He folded his legs in front of him like a sage and tilted his head against the stone. “Come to gloat? You could have waited for the trial to do that."

“I wanted to make sure you were all right,” Fedya said, mostly to his own knees.

“All right?” Anatole repeated, incredulous.

“I care about you, Tolya,” Fedya said.

Anatole threw back his head and laughed. It sounded mad, even to his ears. No doubt the sound made Fedya’s skin crawl. Well, good. He’d earned that.

“You care about me?” Anatole said. “Fedya, if this is what affection looks like, God forbid you ever hate anyone.”

Fedya slammed his fist into his own thigh. Anatole could see the anger building within him, much as he fought to keep it down. Anatole didn’t want him to keep it down. He wanted Fedya to boil over, to rave, to rage, to spill into the cruel assassin Anatole knew him to be. They’d both shown each other their true colors by now. Masking it over in politeness was dishonest and vile. He knew Fedya, and Fedya knew him. Time to let their demons have their day.

“You were going to ruin that girl,” Fedya said. His voice was stretched tight, and the consonants crackled with barely restrained anger. “You would destroy her reputation and abandon your sister, and if you’d actually married Rostova you’d be in worse trouble than you are now.”

Anatole stood up in one swift movement. It sent a wave of vertigo rushing through his head—overly ambitious, perhaps, on so little food and even less sleep. But it was worth it, to see the indistinct blur that was Fedya flinch and lean back.

“You don’t care about Natalie,” Anatole snarled, through the dizzy fog. “You don’t care about Hélène. Don’t pretend you did this for other people.”

He shook his head, wrenching his eyes tight shut against his own lightheadedness. When he opened his eyes, Fedya was standing too, facing him down. Fedya’s hands had curled into fists, which trembled with repressed violence. There was perhaps a foot of space between them, and every inch of it sparked.

“Why do you think I did it, then?” Fedya said softly. “If you know me so well.”

If Anatole knew him? No one knew Fedya Dolokhov like Anatole did. No one ever would.

“Because you wanted this,” Anatole said. He spread his arms wide, indicating his cell, the tiny window, the low ceiling, the long shadows. “You wanted me controlled and tamed like your little dog, Fedya. So you could know you’d won. That’s all you’ve ever wanted.”

“Fuck you,” Fedya said.

He grabbed Anatole by the collar and shoved him backward, pinning him against the wall. Anatole’s spine cracked hard against the stone. He sagged, but Fedya’s hands would not let him fall, would not let him go. They stood nose-to-nose now. Fedya’s sharp breathing was hot against Anatole’s cheek. He knew, as if from a distance, that he should be afraid. What Fedya might do, when anger like this took him. But Anatole was long past fear now. Death had lost its sting over the past three days.

“I don’t give a damn about you,” Fedya said. His voice was rising, loud enough for the guards to hear on the other side of the door. “Do you want to know why I turned you in?”

Anatole’s eyes narrowed. “Please,” he said coolly. “Enlighten me.”

“Because you belong here,” Fedya said.

One hand still locked on Anatole’s collar, he shot the other hand out, fisting it into Anatole’s hair. Fedya jerked back, forcing Anatole's head up, exposing his throat. Anatole couldn’t quite swallow a yelp, through the surprise and the pain.

“Because you’re a selfish, stupid whore who doesn’t know when the game is up,” Fedya said. His breath was hot against Anatole’s throat, just beneath his ear. “You think she loved you? When she gave you up, just like that? When she wouldn’t even fight for you?”

It sounded, for a brief, wild moment, like Fedya was close to crying.

The words whispered into Anatole’s ear, his own voice, taunting himself with the echo of Fedya’s words. She wouldn’t fight for you. She let you go. When she heard you were married, she stepped back and stared at you like a rat, like she’d never seen you before. She doesn’t love you. She never did.

“Please,” he said—it was almost a whimper, it was pathetic, but he couldn’t bear this, not from Fedya, who knew. “Please, don’t.”

The plea only made it worse.

Fedya’s hand dug harder into Anatole’s hair, until Anatole cried out, his knees buckled slightly, fuck, it _hurt_. Not the kind of hurt he’d come to expect from Fedya, the kind you could enjoy. There was no pleasure in this.

“She never wanted you,” Fedya said. “I don’t know why anyone would.”

And he pulled Anatole toward him by the hair and kissed him, hungry and angry and wild and confused, and a little, just a little, afraid.

Anatole tensed. Fedya’s kiss was so familiar. The taste of him almost natural, as easy as breathing. He could so easily have melted into that kiss. Clung to Fedya as Natasha had once clung to him, as the center of gravity in a whirling world. He could have. Without thinking, he sighed, his lips parted, and Fedya pressed his advantage, the kiss harder, Anatole’s back flat against the wall. Their hips flush, their bodies tangled, Fedya’s hand still fisted deep into Anatole’s hair, until his nails would surely draw blood.

Anatole didn’t want this.

He wanted this. He wanted this. He _wanted_.

He didn’t want this.

Anatole shoved Fedya back with both hands, with all his strength. Taken by surprise, Fedya stumbled. He looked up at Anatole, eyes wide, breathing hard, his handsome face tormented, and so innocently confused.

“I hate you,” Anatole snarled, and punched Fedya square in the face.

Fedya gasped in surprise. Anatole had never heard a more beautiful sound than that little gasp. Fedya raised a hand to his nose, then brought his fingers back, brushed with blood. A scar from both Kuragin siblings, then. There was a certain symmetry to it.

Anatole was as satisfied by Fedya’s pain as he was indifferent to his own. It didn’t even matter when Fedya shoved him back against the wall by the shoulders, hard enough for his head to crack against the stone. It didn’t matter when Fedya’s fist caught him in the stomach, driving the breath from his body. The blow rocked him. He hadn’t been hit like that in years. He slid down the wall, lungs pulling at air that wouldn’t come, and thought of his father’s hands, as strong and as cold as this. Fedya took him by the collar and flung him to the floor. His shoulder hit the stone hard. Dizzy from the blow, he cringed. Arm flung over his head, curled in on himself knees to chest, the stone cool against his cheek, breath gasping like a hooked fish and none of it mattered, nothing mattered, it was all the same to him. He heard Fedya swear, felt Fedya’s boot connect with his chest, his stomach, his cheek, heard himself cry out, as if from a great distance.

The sound of pounding feet came from the door. The guard had burst in, attracted by Anatole’s scream. Perhaps more than one. He kept his body curled tight, grasping at breath. The guards pulled Fedya off him, with the sound of a scuffle Anatole did not care to see.

“No you don’t, monsieur,” the guard snapped, pushing Fedya toward the door. “If anyone kills him, it’ll be the magistrate, not you.”

Anatole could see the shadows of three pairs of feet near him, the shined shoes of two guards and Fedya’s dirty military-issue boots. He hurt. Deeply, insidiously, everywhere. He had never cared less.

“Damn you, Kuragin,” Fedya said, and spat at Anatole. It hit him, hot and thick and humiliating, on the back of his neck. He didn't reach to wipe it away. It didn’t matter.

The guards shoved him through the door and slammed it behind him, leaving Anatole alone.

Anatole let his eyes fall closed again. With a small hitch of breath, he rolled over onto his back: feet on the floor, knees raised, arms splayed out from him. The rapid twitching of his heart vibrated against his chest.

_Damn you, Kuragin,_ Fedya had said.

He felt the laugh rising in his chest and did not try to stop it. It slipped out from him, too high and out of his control, jagged and wild. The echo rang through the tiny room, as if a ghost sat on the floor beside him, its mad laughter harmonizing with his own.

Because if this wasn’t hell, what was?


	13. Rejection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which I sincerely apologize to any Pierre fans in the house.

Pierre pushed his book away and took his head in his hands. His elbows rested on the desk, surrounded by a small sea of papers, scribbled notes, books with the corners of their pages turned down. His head ached. A combination of too much wine and not enough sleep, but there was little he could do about either of those things. After Natasha’s near-abduction by his brother-in-law just over a week ago, regret had haunted Pierre’s nights like a demon perched on his chest. _You should have known,_ it whispered, _what did you think he wanted the money for, why didn’t you try to stop it?_ The only thing to silence the whispering demon was wine.

Hence the headaches.

He’d thrown himself into his studies regardless, hoping that the monotony of philosophy would keep him level. And it had worked, in its way. Pierre had entered his study at seven that morning, and now it was one in the afternoon, and he had only thought about Natasha’s wide, empty eyes five or six times since then.

He shouldn’t have gone to see her after Andrey returned her letters. That had been colossally stupid. There was no comfort he could offer. And now he had that memory to deal with. The memory of that sweet innocent girl, standing in the center of the drawing-room. Lost. Weak, still, even then. Broken.

Arsenic. Dear God.

It would have been easier not to know about that.

With a small grunt of effort, Pierre pushed back his chair and rose, buttoning up his waistcoat. He should see Hélène, he thought. In the ten days following the tragedy—he would not call it an elopement, that legitimized the thing, made it sound romantic—he had spoken to his wife only once. A wild screaming fight, his voice thundering, her voice shouting narrow poisoned barbs designed to kill. All he’d said was that her brother deserved to be in prison, or worse, for what he’d done. Which was true, he thought firmly, walking toward the door of his study. Which was true.

After the fight, he’d stormed from the room and slammed the door so hard the doorknob, already loose, fell from the wood and clattered against the floor. Neither of them had touched it since. It lay there still, in the hallway outside the spare bedroom where Anatole had stayed. Both Pierre and Hélène wordlessly adjusted their paths to step around it as they passed.

But it had been ten days. And Hélène, he knew, couldn’t control her brother. Anatole was an impulsive, thoughtless child who did what he wanted. Hélène could be blamed for many things, but she couldn’t be blamed for this.

Pierre left the study, scanning the house for his wife. The house felt curiously silent for this hour of the afternoon. The house was large, three times as many rooms as two people needed, but Hélène always felt underfoot, somehow. Reading a French novel in the breakfast-room when Pierre wanted to answer his letters. Hosting the Petrovs in the parlor when Pierre needed to search the room for his spectacles. Sleeping in the kitchen with her brother’s head in her lap when all Pierre wanted was a cup of coffee and the thinnest pretense of an ordinary marriage. But this morning, she was nowhere to be found. She had taken Anatole’s arrest hard. She deserved comfort. Everyone deserved comfort, even harpies like his wife.

Descending the stairs to the first floor, Pierre heard the low hush of voices from the drawing-room. He paused a moment, considering. Who would Hélène be speaking to in a voice like that? He couldn’t make out the words, hard as he listened, but he could read their tone as clearly as any of his books. Fast. Low. Urgent.

Tender.

Pierre had only ever heard Hélène speak to one person that way.

Something terrible rose within Pierre. A trembling, dark anger, a stormcloud that subsumed him. He had felt this angry only once, back in Petersburg, and Hélène had been its cause then, too. Consumed by that black shuddering cloud, he’d shot Fyodor Dolokhov in an idiot burst of chivalry. He didn’t know what it would do to him now. But one way or another, he would find out.

Pierre threw open the door to the drawing-room. It crashed into the opposite wall, causing both occupants of the room to jump.

Hélène had clearly returned to the house not long ago. She still wore her coat, a sleek black mink that Pierre had bought for her in Petersburg, back when he still thought spending money on Hélène could mend the cracks in their marriage. Her hair wisped in erratic directions, blown askew by wind and fast walking, and she had taken off one of her gloves but forgotten about the other. Her fine eyes were rimmed with red, but her manner gave no other sign that she had been weeping.

She sat on the sofa, staring at Pierre in the doorway.

On the floor at her feet, his back against her shins, sat Anatole Kuragin. Hélène’s bare hand stroked her brother’s hair as Pierre watched.

Even through the cloud, Pierre could see that the boy was a disaster. He shivered in his shirtsleeves, and his clothes were crusted with dirt and other, darker stains, bloodstains, like melted copper. He had lost weight, and his white-blonde hair, matted down and unwashed, stood at an almost normal height. A violent, scarlet-black bruise on his right cheek now overshadowed the yellowing shadow of one on his left. Anatole looked at Pierre without emotion, without blinking, without anything. His eyes were too wide, their shade of blue not quite natural. It was like making eye contact with a ghost.

Hélène laid one hand on Anatole’s shoulder. Anatole leaned his head against Hélène’s knees in wordless response. Pierre’s hands trembled.

“How dare you bring him here,” he said.

“Pierre,” Hélène began.

How dare she. Right in front of him. In his own house. After everything that boy had done.

“He belongs in prison,” Pierre said.

Hélène’s hand tightened on Anatole’s shoulder. “I spoke with the magistrate,” she said. “He agreed to reduce the sentence. Toto paid a fine, and he’ll accept his banishment from Moscow, and the whole mess will be forgotten.”

A fine. A fine paid from Pierre’s coffers. Ten thousand rubles he’d given the boy. Ten thousand.

A charming young woman’s life, torn apart, and Anatole Kuragin would pay a _fine._

 _Toto_ , she still called him.

“How did you convince the magistrate, dear wife?” Pierre said. He didn’t know where the venom in his voice came from, but it was there, and it was powerful, and he relished it. “Did you spread your legs for him, as you will for any man who isn’t me?”

Anatole flinched. He still hadn’t said a word, nor looked away from Pierre. It was maddening. Pierre wanted him to stand up, to say something, to fight. You couldn’t fight a man who sat there staring at you like you were a thousand miles away. You couldn’t fight a ghost.

“He made a mistake,” Hélène said. “He made a mistake, husband, but dear God, don’t you think he’s suffered enough?”

Pierre laughed. “He’s suffered?” he repeated. “Him? Natasha Rostova is ruined. A beautiful, innocent girl is ruined, you filthy whore, do you think of that before you defend your brother?”

“ _Mon cher_ ,” Anatole said softly. “I would thank you not to address my sister in that tone.”

Tone?

Pierre would give him tone.

He grabbed Anatole by the collar and wrenched him to his feet. Anatole was tall, but Pierre was taller, and fully half again as broad. Pierre could have thrown him across the room without trying. Instead, he shook Anatole hard enough for the idiot boy’s brain to rattle in his skull. Anatole’s face flashed with the first emotion Pierre had seen cross it since he entered. Fear. Pierre was glad it was fear.

“You destroyed her,” Pierre shouted, and shook Anatole again with every point. “She trusted you and you destroyed her. All is over for her. Because of you.”

“Pierre, don’t—” Hélène began.

Anatole struggled to escape, but Pierre’s broad hands had caught him and would not let go.

“Amuse yourself with cheap whores and sodomites, pleasure your own sister if you want, fine, and I’ll say nothing, but when I look at Natasha, when I see what your selfishness has done to her? You ought to hang.”

Anatole’s breath hissed in through his nose. Pierre didn’t know which part had shocked him. The whores? Not likely, the boy bragged about it like paying twenty rubles for a stranger to suck your cock made you an emperor. The business with men? Pierre hadn’t known that for certain, but from the look in Anatole’s eyes, he’d bet anything he was right. The incest? With what Pierre had seen this afternoon, only an idiot wouldn’t suspect. Of course Anatole fucked Hélène. She was a slut and he was a degenerate. They were made for one another.

But when Anatole finally spoke, he addressed none of this.

“You’ve seen Natalie?” he said.

The shivering dark cloud blocked out the world for Pierre.

He no longer controlled himself. His body and his will were not his own. He slammed Anatole backward, flattening his back against the desk. Keeping him pinned there with one hand, he seized a heavy brass candlestick with the other. Anatole cringed, whimpered, his hands darting up to shield his head. Too vile to live. Too vile to die with dignity. Pierre would strike this mongrel dog, this stupid child, this villain. Smash his head in. Kill him, if he could.

“Pierre, no—” Hélène began.

Pierre flung Anatole aside. Anatole’s head cracked back against the desk. The blood howled in Pierre’s ears. He whirled toward Hélène, his fist holding the candlestick high. Hélène screamed. He couldn’t hear it over his heartbeat. Kill one? Kill both. Nest of vipers. Not fit to live. No one would blame him.

Anatole lunged forward and threw himself between Pierre and Hélène.

Pierre’s hand froze in surprise.

Anatole stood, eyes wide, breathing hard. Shielding Hélène with his narrow shoulders. His movement had been instinctive. Too fast for thought. Almost as if he’d defended her before. Pierre thought of Prince Vasily, cold and haughty in Petersburg, and the strength in the man’s wide hands.

“Don’t touch her,” Anatole said. His hands shook, and so did his voice, but he stood his ground.

Pierre blinked and came back to himself. The cloud vanished.

He stared at Anatole, and behind him at Hélène, so small, so little. Such a little thing. Both of them, so small, so breakable. Anatole had felt brittle in his hands, his bones like a sparrow’s. Fragile and hollow. Nothing at all inside. Slowly, Pierre set the candlestick on the desk behind him and backed away. Anatole turned his back on Pierre. Hélène embraced her brother, and he held her close to him, letting her bury her head in his shoulder as she trembled. He rested his chin on the top of her head and gently—too gently—stroked Hélène’s windswept hair.

The inside of Pierre’s head hummed.

They had made him this way, he thought. The Kuragins. This vile serpent and his harlot sister, they had done this to him. He used to be better than this.

Silence stretched, wind-blasted and frigid.

“Yes, I saw Natasha,” Pierre said, in a voice devoid of tone.

Anatole broke away from Hélène and turned to face Pierre, a weary sort of shock in his eyes. Hélène did not let go of his arm.

“She is ruined,” Pierre said. “Prince Andrey has refused her. She tried to kill herself to end the shame.”

What little color remained in Anatole’s face drained from it. Eyes wide, he swayed slightly, and would have fallen had Hélène not held his arm. It was as if Pierre’s words had poisoned Anatole in his turn. Clearly Hélène hadn’t hadn’t told Anatole about the suicide attempt. Hadn’t thought her brother could bear hearing that news in his current state. Well, he ought to have thought of that before he tried to kidnap a young woman and trick her into a sham marriage.

“She what?” Anatole whispered.

“Tried to kill herself,” Pierre repeated, louder. “With arsenic. And she despises you.”

This last was not strictly true. _I don’t know_ , she had said, when Pierre asked if she loved Anatole, that disgusting man, that sinner. _I don’t know at all_. In his darker moments, Pierre feared this meant yes. But the words felt good to say, and Anatole’s wide-eyed, shattering belief felt good to witness.

Pierre strode away from Hélène and Anatole, flinging open the drawers of the credenza against the far wall. Scowling, he pulled out his billfold and counted out three hundred rubles, ten at a time, with aggressive deliberation. The only sound through the parlor was the rustling of money and Pierre’s own heart, rushing in his ears.

At last, he turned back to Anatole, who had not moved. Pierre seized his hand and crushed the money into it, closing Anatole’s narrow, unresponsive fingers into a fist around the banknotes. Pierre looked down at their hands. Anatole looked nowhere.

“You will stay here tonight,” Pierre said, in a voice he did not recognize. “I will lock you in if I must. You will not seek out Natasha. You will not write to her. You will send no one to see her. Tomorrow, you will take the six o’clock train to Petersburg.”

“Thank you,” Hélène said softly.

Pierre laughed like a gunshot. “Don’t thank me,” he said. “If I set eyes on your brother again, I will kill him. Make no mistake.”

Turning away from Pierre, Hélène pulled Anatole to sit beside her on the sofa. She spoke again to him in that same low, urgent, tender voice, too quietly for Pierre to hear. Brother and sister sat so close that his hip brushed her skirt. As Pierre watched, Hélène laid a hand on Anatole’s thigh, four inches above the knee. Anatole still held Pierre’s money in one hand.

Revolted, he turned to go. He heard a single, muffled sob from behind him. Which of the Kuragins had made the sound was anyone’s guess.

Pierre hesitated on the threshold, wondering.

If Pierre were a younger man, a braver man, a better man, he would have whirled around then and there, and challenged Anatole to a duel. He would have shot him between the eyes for the wave of degeneracy and dishonor he left in his wake, for the pain he had brought to Natasha’s life, and Andrey’s, and Marya’s. The boy’s body would be food for crows long before the six o’clock train left for Petersburg. Pierre owed that to Natasha. He owed that to Andrey. He owed that to himself.

Instead, Pierre swore and stalked out of the room, back to his study, and his books.


	14. Reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which (unsurprisingly?) war is way less fun than peace.

Without Anatole, Moscow was a nightmare. The kind of gray, endless, unchanging nightmare that blended day into night, week into week. The city’s scruffiness had once felt endearing, the way a crooked tooth added character to a handsome man’s face. Now, Moscow seemed to be falling apart in front of Fedya’s eyes. He drifted from day to day, without occupation, without purpose. The friends that had once seemed so important now felt dull, hollow, masks of their former selves.

He tried his best not to think of Anatole in Petersburg. He knew Hélène received letters from her brother every other week, but had never been able to work up the nerve to ask her what they said. After their fight in prison, not knowing seemed like what he deserved.

The news from the war turned darker as winter turned to spring, and by summer disaster seemed to hang on the air. The French had pushed east, driving the Russian forces back mile after mile, week after week. It was rumored that by October, Napoleon’s forces might reach Moscow. The capital did its best to ignore the threat, going about its business as if the war were worlds away. But Fedya caught the worry in the curious silences between conversations, in the way windows went dark at sundown, in the nervous glances he received in the street when he wore his uniform. The war was not a threat so much as a haunting, and that ghost was difficult to shake.

Seven months later, in September, orders came at last from Major Denisov that Fedya and his regiment were to deploy the following week. A mass order had been sent out across the country, to call soldiers back to the front and enlist any other men who could still be spared. The newly swelled army would join General Kutuzov and the bulk of Russia’s remaining forces at Borodino, where Napoleon and his forces were predicted to swarm on their way to Moscow.

The haunting in the capital turned to outright fear. But for Fedya, the order was almost a relief. He was not built for peace, not anymore.

In war, he would not have to think.

In war, Anatole’s eyes in that prison cell would stop haunting him.

The train left Friday morning, carrying Fedya and his men to the front. He sat in a compartment surrounded by militiamen, yet wholly and utterly alone. He spent the entire six-hour journey field-stripping his pistol. Taking it apart, piece by piece. Laying the mechanics out on the seat beside him, polishing it with grease and a soft cloth until the chamber gleamed. Reassembling it with flawless precision. Taking it apart again. Outside, the train belched thick smoke across the countryside, melding seamlessly with the steel gray of the sky.

The front, when they arrived, had not changed in the months since Fedya had left it. It was like walking into the set of his own dreams, seeing the phantoms in his mind given three dimensions, a ghost made tactile. The same tents, drab olive and poorly pitched, sagging under the fresh fall of snow. The same fires dotting the camp, more smoke than heat, around which wraiths of men warmed their gloved hands. The same sky, pressing too low overhead, a gray blanket swathed around Fedya’s head and choking his breath.

The same smell, of smoke and gunpowder and shit and blood and rotting corpses from graves that were not nearly far away or deep enough, and had been dug upwind.

Fedya walked the camp, unwilling to enter his tent. It was late, and stars glittered overhead, the slim crescent of a moon lending little light and less comfort. Anyone would have forgiven him for sleeping early that night. It had been a lengthy journey, and with Napoleon and his French troops so close to the Russian camp, general wisdom held that the Tsarist forces would have little enough sleep in the coming days. If the attack did not come tomorrow, it would be the next day. The French had nothing to gain by waiting. He should have rested, to gather his strength for the morning. But Fedya could not sit still. This nightmare-made-flesh unnerved him so badly he could not consider sleep. He needed to outrun the memories, as best he could.

A few other soldiers had gotten the same idea, it seemed, though the bulk of the camp was asleep. Although most of them tried to drown their fear in something more potent than walking. Fedya saw a few privates drinking near one of the fires, a corporal smoking what must surely have been the last cigar in the entire camp.

And from behind a tent some twenty yards away from where Fedya stood, he heard two men’s voices, rising high with the venom of an argument.

“You wretch,” said one. “You villain.”

Fedya paused, listening. At least someone was having a worse night than he was.

“You devil,” continued the first man—and might have gone on continuing forever, if no one interrupted him. “I ought to kill you now.”

“Don’t waste your bullets, _mon cher_ ,” said a second voice. “Let the French take care of that. It won’t be long.”

Fedya stared in the direction of the voices.

“Fuck,” he said, at full volume.

He could have identified that voice anywhere. A light tenor, mid-range and musical, with the disdainful sophistication of a Petersburg accent. That sneering French interjection, poised to enchant or insult, as the occasion called for.

All Fedya wanted was to leave that part of his life behind. Pretend none of it had happened. Let the ghost fade into the mist. And then that voice came again, drifting across the Russian camp outside Borodino. That voice wouldn’t even let him die in peace.

“How dare you,” said the first man, as Fedya—despite his better judgment—began to approach them. The sound of the voices grew clearer as he neared, their loathing even more legible than before. “I understood her,” said the first man. “I understood her soul. It was her soul I loved. All you saw was a pretty young girl you could have your way with and cast aside, and—”

“I love her,” the second man said. His voice was light, but that verb tense had been chosen to kill. “I would have stayed with her forever, no matter what she did.” The unspoken remainder of the sentence was icy and clear: _unlike you, who left her, twice._

Fedya turned a corner, and saw the pair of men standing near a low-simmering fire. One, a dark-haired man, wore the epaulettes and three-starred bars of a first lieutenant. He was handsome, with the strong chest and square jaw that came with good breeding in the Russian countryside. His head looked as if it would be better suited to life as a bust than on his shoulders. His gray eyes seemed unfamiliar with the concept of smiling. Fedya knew him well enough. Lieutenant Andrey Bolkonsky, twenty-eighth regiment. They’d fought together before. Not at Austerlitz, Andrey had been with the cavalry back then, but a handful of skirmishes in the Caucasus. Fedya couldn’t say he was fond of the man, but Andrey was passable with a pistol and better with a bayonet, which in war was enough reason to put up with someone.

Gray eyes flashing, Andrey tore off his left glove and flung it down into the snow. Fedya watched it raptly. Easier to look at a glove than at the man standing opposite Andrey. That tall man with the proud spike of white-blonde hair, standing with his back to Fedya. It could be anyone, he reminded himself. An army of thousands. The odds were against it.

“I challenge you,” said Andrey, somewhat unnecessarily at this point.

The tall man laughed. “Don’t be stupid,” he said. “This is war, eh? What’s the point?”

Andrey opened his mouth to respond. Then he shut it again, catching sight of Fedya, standing alone and staring at them. Andrey knew him well enough to understand that Captain Fyodor Dolokhov was not a man to stand around staring in the middle of camp without reason, not so soon before a battle. He raised his eyebrows, inviting Fedya to state his business.

The tall man’s posture shifted. Fedya knew why. Three seconds ago Andrey had prepared to blow his brains out, and now the lieutenant wouldn’t even look at him straight on. The man turned, following Andrey’s eyes.

And Fedya, who had known from the first what was happening, but who had hoped against all reason and against all belief that he was wrong, and had clung to that belief until the very last moment, found himself face to face again with Anatole Kuragin.

The past seven months had not been kind to Anatole. Always lean, he ran toward gaunt now, and shadows Fedya did not remember ringed his handsome eyes. The drab uniform of the Tsar’s army did not suit him. But even worn and faded as he was, Anatole’s presence tightened the screws in Fedya’s chest. Ethereal. Otherworldly. Still, even now, the most beautiful man Fedya had ever seen, would ever see.

“Captain Dolokhov?” Andrey prompted.

Andrey expected Fedya to have come with orders.

Anatole knew better.

Anatole looked between them. At the man who wanted to shoot him and the man who had thrown him in a Moscow cell. He looked at Andrey, then at Fedya, then back to Andrey, then back to Fedya.

Then he threw back his head and laughed.

The sound carried more than a hint of madness. Fedya wanted to hold Anatole while he raged. Wanted to strip off that foul uniform and make love to him right in front of Andrey, and hang the consequences. Wanted to put a bullet between his crazy, laughing eyes.

“God, I hate war,” Anatole said at last, and to no one in particular. “You run into everybody.”

“Lieutenant Bolkonsky,” Fedya said with a sharp salute.

Andrey returned it. He was from a better family than Fedya, and in civilian life wouldn’t have deigned to smile at him in the street. But Fedya outranked Andrey, and he was a better shot, and so there was no choice for Bolkonsky but to mirror his salute. Fedya tried not to enjoy that too much.

“I need a word with Corporal Kuragin,” Fedya said. “You’ll have plenty of time to shoot him later,” he added, as Andrey began to protest.

Andrey scowled, then stooped to pick up his glove. Jerking it back onto his hand, he gave Anatole one final, poisonous look before stalking off, spurs clinking in irritation as he went.

Anatole looked at Fedya with his brows raised and his arms folded. How many times had Fedya seen him in just that pose? Hundreds. Every time Anatole thought Fedya was being an idiot. Twenty times a day, even when they’d been at their best. When Fedya accepted Pierre Bezukhov’s challenge, like an ass, as if anyone could have taken the idea of him seducing Hélène seriously. When he’d broken the nose of an Austrian hussar for coming up six kopeks short on a tavern bill. When he watched Anatole climb out of bed naked and glorious, staring shamelessly as he dressed, and then said something like _Are you all right_ or _You can talk to me_ or _I want to know what you’re thinking_ —something that meant _I love you,_ but wasn’t quite that.

“Do you think I have anything to say to you, Captain?” Anatole asked.

Fedya sighed. “I hoped you might,” he said.

He sat down on the edge of a stone ring encircling the now-dead fire. After a moment, Anatole sat beside him, though he did so with an ironic expression, as if he couldn’t quite explain why he was doing it.

Fedya took back what he’d thought about the dull military green not suiting Anatole. Everything suited him. Tailored to every half-angle of his body, how could it not? The uniform brought out something in Anatole, a hardness Fedya did not remember seeing before. The old Anatole would have looked like a child playing pretend in a corporal’s uniform. This new Anatole made Fedya believe it.

“You like that you outrank me, don’t you,” Anatole said.

Fedya shrugged. “I can’t say I mind,” he said. “I’m surprised your father didn’t get you another post behind a desk. Adjutant to an adjutant.”

Anatole laughed. “I disgraced the family,” he said. “Well, more than usual. He’s through spending effort on me.”

“That bastard,” Fedya said, with feeling.

“Don’t you worry about me,” Anatole said. “I’m not you, but I’m a good shot.”

Yes, Fedya thought. From forty paces, Anatole never missed. He doubted Napoleon would do him the courtesy of counting them off.

But men had surprised their commanders in war before. Besides, Anatole was stupid, but he wasn’t helpless. He’d been to the front in Poland, however briefly. And he _was_ better with a pistol than any other idiot Fedya had met in Moscow. That much was true. Given three seconds to aim, Anatole could take care of himself.

Fedya repeated these facts to himself, silently. It irritated him, that he felt the need to. He was a captain. He had men to lead. There was a war on. It shouldn’t have mattered what happened to Anatole, a junior corporal, one soldier among thousands.

Except it did matter.

“How are you?” Fedya asked.

Anatole tilted his head to the side and stared at Fedya. It appeared he had never heard a stupider question in his life. “How do you think?” he said.

It was not supposed to go this way. Fedya didn’t know the right thing to say, to make this all right. He had to find it. There had to be one.

The pit of his stomach turned sour. Of course, he knew what the right thing to say was. The simplest thing in the world to say. But the thought of forming the words was sickening. Not now. Not with the way Anatole was watching him, with the expression of a man looking at vomit.

Don’t be a coward, he told himself.

_I love you._ Say that.

“I…the night before I left Moscow,” Fedya said, like a coward. “I dined with Pierre and Hélène.”

Anatole’s eyes narrowed. “Really,” he said. “And how is dear Pierre?”

“The same,” Fedya said. “Hélène barely spoke to me, of course. And I think she spat in my soup.”

Anatole smiled at that. “Bless her, sweet sister.”

“And.” Damn. In avoiding one impossible sentence, Fedya found himself facing another. He swallowed, then forced out the words. “And Natasha was there too.”

Anatole went very still. He turned his head to look at Fedya, but said nothing. His eyes revealed nothing. The only sign that Fedya’s words had not turned Anatole to stone was the faint twitch in his jaw, as if he would say something, but didn’t know what the words were.

“Pierre’s been helping,” Fedya said, “since. Well. After. Reintroducing her to society. Building new connections. He seems fond of her.”

“I’m sure he is,” Anatole said, in a strained voice. He seemed to understand something more than Fedya meant by this. “Very fond of her.”

Anatole closed his eyes, his head lowering for a moment. Fedya saw his breath hang in his chest, a slight hitch around the ribs. He wanted to put a hand on Anatole’s shoulder, and grasped his own left hand with his right instead.

“How did she look?” Anatole asked.

Haunted, Fedya thought. Just like Anatole did now. That same shadow beneath the eyes, that same shudder in their breath. Speaking with ghosts no one else could see.

“Beautiful,” Fedya said. “She smiled all night. Laughed when Hélène teased Pierre. She seemed better.”

None of this was a lie. None of this was quite the truth.

Anatole pushed both hands back through his hair. Hands folded behind his head, he looked up, toward the night sky, toward the stars. “And she never spoke of me?” he asked.

She didn’t have to, Fedya thought.

“No,” he said. “Or of Bolkonsky.”

Anatole nodded. He breathed in, then let it out in a soft wave that was not quite a sigh. Fedya had never seen Anatole like this before. Thoughtful. Quiet. It made him want to cry, knowing that Anatole hurt, and didn’t believe he could trust Fedya with the knowledge of that pain.

Of course, Fedya had done nothing to earn that trust.

Of course, that pain was all Fedya’s fault.

Finally, Anatole stood. Fedya rose with him, the desiccated remains of the fire still smoldering at their backs.

“Is there anything else?” Anatole asked.

And Fedya still could not say it. Napoleon and the French half a mile away and still the words would not come. _I love you_ , he thought. Only a coward couldn’t say it.

Fedya shouldn’t have said what he did, but he felt the words spilling from his mouth anyway. They hung there between him and Anatole, a thin mist against the cold, before blowing away into the dark.

“Come to my tent tonight?” Fedya said. “I…I’ve missed you.”

Anatole regarded Fedya with his head at a slight, mocking angle. “And who do we blame for that?” he asked.

Fedya said nothing. Who did they blame for any of this?

Anatole smiled. A cruel smile that seemed to hurt him as much as it hurt Fedya. “Permission to retire, Captain Dolokhov?”

Fedya’s face burned. “Get out,” he said, and turned away.

He did not see Anatole’s salute. But he heard it, the click of his spurs, the sharpness and precision of his silence. Then, Anatole turned and walked away from Fedya, back into the camp. He left a set of uniform footprints in the snow, identical to those around them.


	15. Absolution

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Anatole gets maybe 8% better at feelings?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know if I realized this was gonna be so sad when I started writing it? But the angst bus has left the station and there's no turning around until we get to our last stop.
> 
> CW: Slight suggestion of suicidal thoughts.

Anatole stood perfectly still, staring at the tent in front of him. This was stupid. This was terribly, pathetically stupid. He had pride still. He wasn’t a frightened child who would run toward the first thing that felt familiar. He was stronger than this.

All of these things were true, and none of them were.

It was late, long past midnight, but a slash of light spilled between the tent flap and the ground. Anatole was not the only one who couldn’t sleep, then. He hugged his arms around his chest, taking a breath that snagged against his ribs on the exhale. He felt so much colder than he had before, standing there alone.

But that was nonsense. It was September in Russia. He was being stupid. Everyone was cold.

Anatole had put up a good show when Fedya approached him, rescuing him from the wrath of Andrey Bolkonsky. He’d handled himself well. He could be proud of that. For a while, he had been. But after he left Fedya, he’d been left to pace the camp, surrounded by men he didn’t know, lit like damned spirits by the fire. He had nowhere to go. To his tent, to sleep? With Fedya’s voice ringing in his ears, Natalie’s eyes looking at him from every shadow, and the French less than half a mile from his throat? Not a chance.

Decamping with his regiment from Petersburg, Anatole had decided death didn’t matter. He wasn’t really living now, anyway. He’d been drifting for months, haunting the city rather than living in it. All that time he’d wasted dreaming of Petersburg, only to find it a ghost town, a wasteland, a nightmare. Back in his father’s house, nervous and powerless as a child. Back under his father’s thumb. A position he’d sworn he’d never find himself in again. Tiptoeing through that cold and empty house. Bearing his father’s insults as a man the way he’d borne his father’s fists as a boy, silent and trying with all his heart not to break, to cry, _you stupid, worthless libertine, your mother must have been a whore and a liar, I’d never father a son as hopeless and pathetic as you._ Haunting, not living.

Without Natalie. Without Fedya. Away from Hélène.

Alone. Nothing.

Ending everything made sense to him. It would have been neater than carrying on. More efficient. But his thoughts on this score lacked conviction. He’d spent a night not long ago with a small bottle of arsenic, lying on his bed on top of the blankets, tossing the bottle in the air and catching it one-handed, considering. It went on for hours, until he shoved it into a drawer and left the room at sunrise. He was a coward, in many ways, including that. Still, a French bullet would handle the thing nicely. All you had to do was not fight back, and it was over. He’d held that thought firmly in his mind. It stayed strong through the journey, through his first night in camp.

But then there was Fedya’s fine mouth and daring eyes, saying words like _I’ve missed you_ and _She looked beautiful_ , and the full, terrifying power of death rushed back.

He could not be alone tonight. And there was only one person he could turn to.

Only one person who could edge Natalie’s eyes out of his mind, at least for a few minutes, at least until it no longer mattered.

All right, Anatole decided. He would have no pride. He would be a coward, a disgrace to the profession of soldiering. But he would get what he needed.

He took a slow breath, then pushed aside the canvas flap and ducked into the tent.

Though it had to be two in the morning, an oil lamp burned on the camp stool beside the bed. It gave the canvas space an almost romantic feeling, like a pavilion out of the Arabian Nights, or a silk-hung room in some villa. The tent’s furnishings were spartan, holding little but a foldable cot, a canvas tarp to cover the snow, and a beautiful revolver on the camp stool, polished and catching the lamplight until it shone.

Seated on the bed, Fedya looked up as Anatole entered. He had been staring at a map of the surrounding countryside, spread out on the blanket beside him. He stared at Anatole as though visited by a ghost on the night before battle. Without speaking, Fedya folded up the map and tucked it under the bed. He’d taken off his jacket, and sat in shirtsleeves and trousers, his strong arms and narrow waist intoxicating in the lamplight. Beautiful. Harsh, and beautiful.

Anatole stood perfectly still near the entrance. It seemed even colder than it had minutes before. He crossed his arms tight like a child, willing himself to speak. The words came hard. Harder, now that Fedya was staring.

“I shouldn’t be here,” Anatole said.

Fedya said nothing, either in agreement or contradiction.

“But I’m afraid,” Anatole said.

There.

He had never spoken those words to Fedya before. They felt more intimate than anything he’d ever said in front of this handsome, daring officer. Anatole had said _I love you_ to Fedya the second day he knew him, and said it at least a hundred times since. But that small admission, that _I’m afraid_ , it surrendered something. Something he had always kept separate. Something in himself he had not wanted Fedya to take from him. When you knew a person’s fear, you could own them. You could see them. Deep inside them. Everything. Anatole had never wanted to be seen that way. If he wasn’t seen tonight, he thought he might vanish altogether.

Fedya knew this, and understood it instantly. He stood up from the cot and stepped forward, though he kept a few feet between them. Cautious, trying to judge Anatole’s intentions. Good luck to him figuring that out. Anatole had no idea what he was doing.

“What are you afraid of?” Fedya asked.

Anatole laughed. “What do you think?” he said. “I don’t want to die.” The words hurt as he spoke them, but a healing kind of hurt, like drawing a bullet out of a wound. He said them again, stretching out their ache. “I don’t want to die.”

“Tolya, don’t be dramatic,” Fedya said, though his voice was tender. “This is war, not the opera. Everyone doesn’t die at the end.”

Anatole said nothing. If he said anything, he would cry, and that level of intimacy was still a bridge too far.

Fedya sighed and took both of Anatole’s hands. Fedya’s palms were rough and smelled of grease and smoke. They were so warm. Stronger than Anatole’s. He felt his resolve melt into those gunpowder hands.

“Are you—” Fedya began.

“Please,” Anatole said. “I don’t want to be alone.”

Another painful and freeing set of words. He wondered what else he might say, if Fedya turned him away, forced him to beg, made him keep talking.

But Fedya did not do that.

He rested his hands on Anatole’s waist, pulled him close, and kissed him.

Usually, between them, a kiss was a doorway to something else. You started out kissing, you ended up in some kind of gymnastic position in Anna Mikhailovna’s broom closet, trying to muffle the noise. But tonight, this was what they’d both come for. This soft meeting of lips, the shared breath. The steady pressure of warm hands against your body, a body that might be broken tomorrow but was not tonight, was treasured tonight.

Fedya’s kiss felt like a lighthouse. For a brief moment, Anatole knew his way.

They stood there, nose to nose, close enough to kiss again. Fedya’s strong arms kept Anatole steady. Anatole melted into them, both his own arms draped around Fedya’s shoulders. They fit perfectly like this. He’d forgotten that, in some ways. In other ways, he’d always known it.

“I don’t forgive you,” Anatole whispered.

Fedya closed his eyes. “I know.”

“Can I stay?”

“Of course.”

When they made love, there was no anger in it. Fedya’s body looked bronze in the flickering light of the oil lamp. It danced strange shadows beneath his eyes and reshaped the planes of his cheeks. In this light, Fedya looked even more beautiful and even more strange. His touch was gentle. The pleasure he took in Anatole’s body was soft, tender, warm.

It felt like going home, Anatole thought, and hated himself for thinking it.

Their uniforms lay forgotten in a tangle on the tarp. In this light, it was impossible to tell which belonged to who.

Fedya dozed in the aftermath with his head on Anatole’s chest. His breath was soft and contented, his handsome body relaxed and beaded with sweat. Fedya had not apologized, and Anatole had not forgiven him, but half-asleep, Fedya had the look of a man absolved.

Carefully, Anatole eased out from beneath Fedya, climbing out of bed. Fedya whined softly, resenting the distance, but made no move to pull Anatole back.

As Anatole dressed, he looked back at Fedya, who sat up in bed to watch him, leaning back on his hands. At the strength of his jaw, the power of his hands, the delicacy of his lashes, longer than Anatole would have thought—he had never noticed them, those lashes, somehow, before. Anatole pulled on his boots, belted his pistol, and turned to go.

“You won’t die,” Fedya said from behind him.

Anatole turned back. Fedya’s sharp, daring eyes looked at Anatole with a soft smile.

Anatole did not return it.

“This is war,” he said. “That’s what people do.”

He ducked through the tent flap and out into the night.

Outside, the sun had not yet fully risen. A small red smear coated the horizon, almost visible through the woods to the east, but to the west, the camp was still dark. Anatole paused, looking. As far west as he could see, thin pinpricks of light that were not stars crested a nearby hill. Come morning, those lights would turn to French soldiers, storming Borodino, two armies colliding like continents.

As he cut through camp to his regiment’s tent, the lights of the French seemed to glow brighter, inching slowly closer with the rising sun.


	16. Devotion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Andrey is trash and I hate him, among other things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Set during a battle, so some graphic wartime violence.

Some men loved war. They found it romantic. Exciting. An arena to prove something—anything. Andrey had been one of those men, once. War was a chance to be a hero, he’d thought. To fight and die beside your brothers defending your country, while the band played on behind. Then he’d gone to war himself, and everything changed.

There was nothing romantic about Borodino.

The world rattled around him, shaken by smoke and the thundering roar of cannon fire. The French matched the Russians in numbers, but they held the superior position, and the Russian army had been crippled by hard fighting and short rations. Half their forces were new recruits: untested men, boys really, pulled in to defend the capital. It was a slaughter from the first. Andrey had seen fighting before, had seen men killed before, but he had never seen this. The dirt beneath his feet was slick with Russian blood.

He would die here, he thought. Here on this bloody plain, a hundred miles from Moscow. The French would overrun the city. Princess Mary. His father. Pierre, all his friends, his family, everyone he loved, they would die as Moscow burned. All because he could not stop it, this terrible, inexorable machine, these bloody days that beat him into the ground and left him there.

And Natasha, too, she would—

No. None of that.

“Bolkonsky!” Dolokhov shouted.

The captain looked half-wild as he wove through the smoke toward Andrey. His uniform had been torn, and his face was smeared with black soot and copper blood. Andrey had no doubt he looked the same. An army of the dead, staggering. The ghostly figures of Dolokhov’s men stood at his back, all of them ragged and smoke-stained, one of them holding his fast-bleeding arm to his chest. From out of the pack of ghosts, Andrey saw the striking blue eyes of Anatole Kuragin, but Andrey’s rage had abandoned him when his hope for victory did. So the villain had not been shot yet. There was time still for that, for all of them. Anatole’s eyes now had the same dead cast to them that Dolokhov’s did, that Andrey was sure his own held. Not fear, but the feeling that came after that, something colder and more determined.

“The fort, Bolkonsky,” Dolokhov yelled. Had to yell, the shuddering of cannons drowned out anything below a shout. “Fall back to defend the fort. Kutuzov’s orders.”

Andrey nodded. He had lost control of his voice after the shelling began, and was no longer certain he could speak. His regiment and Dolokhov’s turned, forcing their way through the skirmish, bullets whistling inches from their ears. The pits of hell, Andrey thought. Hot screaming damned souls, clawing for half an inch of space.

They heard the bellowing roar long before they saw anything.

Andrey froze. It could have come from anywhere. The smoke was thick and choked out the light.

Then he saw it: the cannon shell packed with gunpowder, flying straight at Dolokhov’s regiment.

“No!”

Andrey didn’t know who shouted. He saw the shape of a man dive forward through the smoke, flinging himself at Dolokhov, knocking the captain to the ground and out of the way.

And then the shell exploded overhead, like a comet, screaming fire at the end of the world.

The force of the shell blew Andrey backward. He landed hard on his back in the bloody dirt. His head cracked against the ground. Lights danced in front of his eyes.

The explosion roared in his ears like a wolf.

So quiet, otherwise.

He lay there and looked up at the sky.

The dust hovered over him. It descended slowly, like a soft rain, coating his upturned face in ashes. His head rang with trembling silence.

Dead, he thought.

I must be dead.

He sat up, hesitantly. No. He moved one leg, then the other. Nothing was broken. An ache in his chest, blood on his shoulder. He was bruised and shaken and probably concussed, but alive. A miracle. He laughed but couldn’t hear it through the ringing in his ears.

Dolokhov’s regiment, he thought, remembering. He ran across the field, where the shell had hit. Dreading what he would see. Needing to see it.

But Dolokhov was all right. Almost untouched. A small trail of blood across his cheek, as if a shard of rock had grazed him when he fell. The shell had come straight for him—should have shattered him into a hundred pieces—and Dolokhov escaped with a single scratch. The man must have been the luckiest bastard in Russia.

Then Andrey drew closer.

For a moment, he thought Dolokhov had gone mad. The man knelt in the dirt, his hands shaking visibly even from this distance. As Andrey approached, Dolokhov screamed, a raw wailing sound like a man’s death-cry. He bent over another man, fallen in the dust, grasping at his shoulder, frantically trying to wake him.

Andrey knelt next to him, and saw that the man Dolokhov tried to rouse was Anatole Kuragin.

Anatole had thrown himself in the way of the shell to get Dolokhov to safety. It must have been instinct—there hadn’t been enough time for a conscious decision. His face was pale beneath the soot, and a long trail of blood sliced down from his hairline, like a scar along his cheek. Through the cannon fire, Andrey could hear the keening of Anatole’s breath, a doglike whimper, echoing on each inhale. Eyes tight closed, Anatole clutched at his right leg, where a thick stream of blood poured into the dirt through his fingers. A six-inch piece of shrapnel had sliced through the muscle of his thigh and stuck there, embedded in the shattered flesh. His skin hung tattered and gaping, like a torn envelope. Andrey could see, through blood so thick it seemed black, a pale flash of bone. He felt the vomit rise again.

“He’s alive,” Andrey shouted over the roar to Dolokhov. “He needs a medic.”

They couldn’t spare the men to take Anatole to a medic. But they couldn’t spare Dolokhov’s skill with a gun either, and there was no chance he would re-enter the fray until Anatole was brought to the camp doctor. Andrey dispatched two of his soldiers to lift Anatole to his feet.

Anatole screamed when they moved him. Worse than Dolokhov had. High and raw, like tearing out his nerves. Andrey wondered if he would ever stop hearing that scream. The soldiers supported Anatole between them, guiding him to the medic tent, on the edge of the field.

Andrey clapped Dolokhov on the shoulder, and with that simple movement, Dolokhov seemed to remember where he was. He gripped his gun in both hands, and a ferocity shone in his eyes that frightened Andrey, and made him powerfully grateful that this fierce assassin was on his side.

The day was long, and bloody, and saw no victory in either camp. When night fell, the French called for a pause—no doubt Napoleon considered this the civilized thing to do, Andrey thought. No massacres after dinner. Firing, they said, was to resume in the morning. The Russian camp felt like a living cemetery, haunted by men who knew they were corpses but would still have to return to the field the next day to prove it.

Andrey reported to the general and gave the report of his men. No officers lost, three privates killed in the shelling. He reported the news without emotion, without sensation at all. Other regiments had sustained worse. He was lucky to have lost only three.

He ate without thinking, washed his bloody face and hands only because it seemed like the sort of thing one did. It was late by now, well after midnight. The stars overhead had never seemed colder, or farther away.

Shocked, aching, head humming, Andrey found himself moving toward the medic tent. He had no business there. But he had to see what had happened. The image of Anatole curled in on himself in the dust, that was hard to shake. The sound of that scream.

He hadn’t expected a selfish, careless, stupid man like Anatole to do such a thing. He hadn’t thought a man like that could.

Andrey pulled back the tent flap and stepped inside.

The scent was agonizing. Blood and fluids and dirt and shit and piss. The scent of death. Andrey pressed one hand over his mouth and nose, fighting down a gag. After the first moment, however, it seemed less powerful. A man could get used to anything. This was not a reassuring thought. It was simply the way it was.

Andrey saw Dolokhov immediately. The captain was sitting in the corner of the tent, on a small folding chair beside a camp bed. He had come straight from the field, still wearing his tattered uniform, reeking of smoke and smeared with filth. Andrey had never seen a man more lost. Dolokhov never took his eyes off Anatole, lying on the camp bed, not even when Andrey came to sit beside him. Dolokhov held Anatole’s left hand in both of his.

Anatole looked even worse in the lamplight. His face was paler than the sheets beneath him, and his chest barely rose with his shallow breathing. A faint mist of sweat dampened his brow, despite the cold air. Andrey looked down, examining the wound that had turned his stomach on the field—

He retched. There was no holding it back now. Andrey turned away and emptied his stomach into a nearby bucket, already full of something equally vile. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. His knees shook. He wanted to scream. It was possible he’d screamed already, without realizing.

Because the wound wasn’t there anymore.

And neither was the leg.

Anatole’s right leg now stopped two inches below the hip. A nest of bandages covered the stump, stemming the bleeding, though the once-white fabric now seeped a dirty scarlet. The empty air below the bandage seemed impossibly vulgar. His body was unrecognizable. The left leg looked grasshopper-like and alien, horrifying so suddenly without its partner. Andrey stared at the stump and felt he might vomit again.

“Captain Dolokhov,” Andrey said, once he regained control of his voice.

Dolokhov did not look up.

Andrey sat on the end of the camp bed beside Anatole’s. Empty, somehow, though there was no shortage of wounded men. “The surgeons must think he can live,” he said. “Otherwise they wouldn’t have bothered.”

He meant it as a comfort. He wanted to take the pain from Dolokhov’s eyes, any way he could—even if it meant hoping for the life of a man Andrey had wanted dead for months. But from the way Dolokhov flinched at the words, Andrey suspected he’d misjudged their effect. Dolokhov continued gazing at Anatole, shoulders tense. Andrey began to say something else, to try again.

But then Dolokhov sat forward in the chair, his grip on Anatole’s hand convulsing, and Andrey fell silent.

Anatole’s eyes opened. Slowly, barely a crack at first, but Dolokhov noticed it instantly, from the first twitch of the eyelids. Anatole’s breathing was still shallow, but his eyes were perfectly clear.

Dolokhov had forgotten that Andrey existed. He forgot everything but the man bleeding on the camp bed in front of him.

Anatole looked at Andrey, who sat in his line of vision, but said nothing. Then with effort, he turned his head to Dolokhov. A faint smile crossed his mouth.

“ _Mon petit ours_ ,” Anatole said, his voice barely above a whisper. “Well, don’t you look like shit.”

Dolokhov’s laugh was rippled through with relief. He had leaned forward to the edge of his chair, and now bent over Anatole, holding his hand so tight his own knuckles shone. Anatole flinched, but made no sign that he wanted Dolokhov to release him.

“You idiot,” Dolokhov said. Andrey could see his eyes had misted. “You stupid colossal idiot, why did you do that?”

Anatole said nothing. Andrey watched as his fingers clenched Dolokhov’s hand harder.

“Look at you,” Dolokhov said. He was rambling now, but didn’t seem to be able to stop himself. “Your damned leg, Tolya. What do you think the girls at Matreshka’s are going to want with a one-legged prince?”

Anatole closed his eyes in a slow wince. “I don’t use my leg to fuck, Fedya,” he said. “Honestly.” He laughed, more a cough, one that seemed to hurt him. “What do you think sex with women involves?”

Andrey shifted on the bed, but couldn’t look away. He shouldn’t be there. It was a captain speaking to a subordinate, on the surface. Two friends, sharing a reckless and stupid past, one level down. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that at the core of it, Andrey was watching something private, something Dolokhov would rather have died than let anyone see. He should have left. Given them their time, their space. But he feared what Dolokhov would do to himself if he were left alone, if Anatole took a turn for the worse. The captain had not removed his pistol from his belt. Andrey did not trust the look of that pistol, in a man as desperate as Dolokhov. And so he stood, helpless and watching, as Dolokhov fought against tears as fiercely as he had fought the French.

“I’ll write to Hélène and tell her you were a stupid hero,” Dolokhov said. He tried to match Anatole’s light, ironic tone. He was not as good at the deception as Anatole was, and mangled it badly. “Anatole the Daring Warrior. She’ll never stop talking about it. You’ll be the toast of Moscow until 1814.”

“Do that,” Anatole said. “She’ll enjoy it. And.”

Anatole broke off. His hands twitched, and Andrey saw his throat working, as if he would vomit. Dolokhov saw it too, but Anatole mastered himself after a moment. He lay there in silence, breathing hard, grasping at composure that seemed to be slipping. Then he spoke.

“Fedya, I need you to write to Natalie.”

Andrey’s vision seemed to flicker, in and out in time with his surprise. His fists tightened around nothing. Natalie. The snake called her Natalie, as if he knew her, as if she cared for him. As if he had any right to live, let alone to think of her, to let her name pass his lips.

The reaction was instinctive, but it did not last long. It was hard to maintain his hatred of Anatole, with that empty void that had been a leg staring at him.

Though he had no reason to, Dolokhov flinched at the name as well. As if the syllables had slapped him. His shoulders stiffened, and his tight grip on Anatole’s hand no longer seemed wholly tender. Andrey could see a curse building on his lips, one he swallowed like a sob.

“You can write to her yourself,” Dolokhov said. “After the war.”

“Fedya, don’t be stupid,” Anatole said.

Dolokhov closed his eyes. He took a long breath, then released it, then took another.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll write to her. If it will make you rest.”

Anatole smiled. “Thank you,” he said.

“Now shut up, you,” Dolokhov said. He brushed one hand through Anatole’s hair, white-blonde splattered with filth. His palm smeared with blood, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Rest. I need you to put a bullet in Napoleon’s brain tomorrow.”

Anatole laughed, another harsh dog’s bark of one. “Pierre will be so disappointed,” he said. “He wanted to do that.”

Dolokhov had not taken his hand from Anatole’s hair. Under Andrey’s stunned gaze, he smiled, then cupped Anatole’s cheek like a man might a lover’s. He leaned forward and brought his lips to Anatole’s with care bordering on reverence. Anatole sighed and returned the kiss, a look of peace smoothing out the creases in his brow. His eyes closed, this time not in pain. They looked beautiful, Andrey thought, to his own surprise. He had never seen two people who were so different, who made such a wild and unlikely match, and yet who looked so at home one against the other. Like a painting, light and shadow, captured and embodied.

“I love you,” Dolokhov said, so softly Andrey almost didn’t hear.

Anatole’s eyes remained closed. But the ghost of a smile hovered at his mouth.

“Finally,” he said. “If I’d known all I had to do was lose a leg.”

Dolokhov’s laugh was more than half a sob. “I love you, Tolya,” he said, louder this time. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

“I love you too,” Anatole said. It sounded like it meant less, to Andrey’s ear. But then, it always sounded that way, when you were the second one to say it. And if love could be measured by what you were willing to do, well. Look at where they were.

Anatole seemed to sink further into the bed, drifting from consciousness. Andrey was surprised he’d remained lucid as long as he had. Anatole must have lost a pint of blood by now. Having the strength for an extended conversation was so improbable it was almost heroic.

Dolokhov’s thoughts seemed to follow the same track. He kissed Anatole softly on the forehead, then squeezed his hand before releasing it.

“Sleep,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Anatole said nothing. For a long moment, the only sound was the faint rasp of his breathing, still rough in the back of his throat. Andrey stood, thunderstruck by what he had seen.

“Lieutenant Bolkonsky,” Dolokhov said, without looking.

Andrey flinched. He hadn’t realized Dolokhov knew he was still there. “Captain?”

“Go to General Kutuzov,” Dolokhov said. “Tell him I’m needed here and can’t join him tonight to review the field. Take my place, if you want. The honor is yours.”

Andrey said nothing. He did not leave. Instead, he stood there, watching Dolokhov sit in quiet silence, his hands on his knees, watching Anatole drift nearer to sleep.

Andrey bit his lip. “It was a brave thing he did,” he said quietly.

He saw Dolokhov’s shoulders stiffen at the words.

“The finest soldier couldn’t have done better,” Andrey went on. “You must be quite a captain, to earn the devotion of a wretch like that.”

Dolokhov closed his eyes as if in pain. He clenched his knees until his hands trembled. When he spoke, his voice was level and professional. “I gave you an order, Lieutenant.”

Andrey saluted, his spurs clinking with the movement. “Yes, Captain,” he said.

He left them there in the tent and ducked out into the camp, breathing deep the cool, fresh night air outside. He paused, looking back toward the stream of light spilling from inside the tent, where Dolokhov would sit all night, measuring Anatole’s breath, listening to his heartbeat.

Whatever had happened, and whatever might happen yet, there was still a war going on.

Andrey turned his back on the tent and cut through the camp, seeking the general.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. This is the second-to-last chapter, with an epilogue-y thing after.
> 
> 2\. I think Andrey is the real villain in GC, so sorry if he came off like a lil shit! I don't know how else to write him.
> 
> 3\. Sorry for the other things too.


	17. Obligation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which it's still nineteenth-century Russia, and Fedya has some letters to write.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh, so, thanks for sticking with me through the Long Day's Journey Into Angst this ended up being. And thanks to the people who have been yelling at me in the comments, too :)
> 
> All righty, one last chapter with my boys. Let's finish it out.

September 10, 1812

Hélène,

I know you don’t want to hear from me. You were very clear at our last meeting. I was not to see you, I was not to speak to you, I was not to write to you. I understood that. But he asked me to, and you know I’ve never been able to deny him anything, not even when I should.

Your brother and I fought beside one another at the Battle of Borodino. You’re a smart woman, Hélène. You already know how this letter’s going to end.

He fought like a hero. I know you won’t believe me. You knew him as well as I did, better even, so you know full well Anatole didn’t have the makings of a hero. Unless it’s heroic to proclaim undying love to seven women and four men in a weekend, in which case Anatole was the Achilles of the nineteenth century. But war does strange things to men. It turns them into monsters we don’t recognize, or heroes we recognize even less. Anatole was a hero. Really.

He saved my life. I know this will only make you hate me more. He shielded me from a French shell that would’ve blown me to pieces if it hit. I didn’t ask him to. I would never have asked him. Some nights I hate him for doing it. For making me wake up every morning knowing the shell that struck your brother, that struck the man I loved, was meant for me.

Honestly, Hélène, I’d rather die than have to know that.

Tolya never thought about consequences. Say the word “consequences” around him and he’d look at you, head tilted to the side, like you’d started speaking Chinese. I don’t think he understood what his sacrifice would mean for me, or for you. I wouldn’t have expected him to think that far ahead. His brain told him what to do, and his body did it, and the rest of us have to pick up the pieces. Always have. You and I, Hélène, we’re always the ones left to deal with what happens next.

I’ll tell you what happened, but you don’t need to read it if you don’t want to. You can put this letter in a drawer and never look at the rest of it, never find out, and I won’t judge you. But I respect you, Hélène. I respect you enough to give you the choice. To know or not to know. A choice I wish someone gave me.

When Anatole took the shell meant for me, a piece of shrapnel the size of my forearm tore through his leg. It lodged two inches into the bone, severed a main artery, and leached lead into his blood, which was already infected with tetanus. At least, that’s what the field surgeon told me, and I believe him.

They amputated the leg. They had no opium left to give him for the pain. The surgeon gave him a leather strap to bite down on and took the leg off then and there. I wish I could tell you he lost consciousness before the surgeon finished. I wish I could tell you that. But I don’t think I’ll ever forget the way he screamed.

I stayed with him. I didn’t let go of his hand. He was never alone, Hélène. I made sure of that.

They amputated the leg, but it was too late. The lead had already poisoned his blood. He was unconscious at the end. I don’t think he felt anything. The last few hours, he didn’t look like he was in pain.

Anatole died the day after the battle, in the field hospital at Borodino.

I fought to have his body sent home to Petersburg, but I couldn’t. Too many dead. Thousands. Tens of thousands. They were burying generals in pits along with the rest. I’ve sent word to your father, telling him what happened, though Anatole never asked me to do that, and he’d probably yell at me if he were here to know I’d done it.

My grief is different from yours, I know that. You were two halves of the same person. I can’t imagine what you feel. But I know my own grief. It seems impossible that I won’t see him again. That he won’t walk into the middle of an opera or a ball or a whorehouse or a battlefield with that stupid swagger and that arrogant smile, as if he’s better than all of us, because only idiots show up where they’re supposed to be at the time they’re supposed to be there. It seems impossible that I won’t hear him say my name again. See him smile. Listen to him tease me. Hear him spout off six different reckless ideas in a breath, all of them half in French, and then see him wrinkle his nose at me when I explain why they’re stupid ideas, and then kiss the pout off his lips, and—God, Hélène, a thousand things, a hundred thousand things now that he’s gone.

Did he love me, Hélène? If anyone would know, you would. Tell me, if you do. I know he cared for me. I know he died for me. But neither of those are really the same thing.

I won’t write to you again. I know you’d rather I didn’t. I’ll be stationed near Moscow for the time being, though I doubt that post will last long. The war keeps turning, even if the world has stopped.

He died so I could keep fighting. He didn’t give a damn about the war, and I know that, but he died so I could fight. So I could protect you, and protect everything he loved about this cruel and stupid life. So I’ll do it. I don’t know what happens after the war. I don’t know what I’ll do then without him. Maybe the French will take care of that for me, maybe I won’t live that long and I won’t have to decide. But for now, I fight.

I loved Anatole, Hélène. Whatever you might think. I wanted you to know that.

— Fedya

P.S. Please find a way to deliver the enclosed note to Natasha. I promised him I’d send it, but I don’t know her address, now that Marya Dmitrievna no longer lives in Nikitsky Boulevard. But I assume you know where Natasha lives now. If you don’t, your husband does.

#

September 10, 1812

Countess Natalya Rostova,

I doubt you remember me. We were briefly introduced at a performance of _Le Nozze di Figaro_ last winter, but I can’t imagine I made much of an impression that night, given the competition I faced for your attention. Captain Dolokhov, seventy-first infantry regiment. I was a friend of Anatole Kuragin. I know that likely doesn’t endear me to you. I apologize for writing to you this way, but it can’t be helped.

Anatole died at the Battle of Borodino on September 8, of injuries sustained in battle. He died a hero’s death. This may surprise you. It surprised me. It’s no less true for the surprise.

I was with him when he died. He asked me to write to you. At first, he didn’t tell me what to say. When I pressed him—I didn’t want to compose a message like that myself, Countess—he said this:

“Tell Natalie I love her. I would have loved her forever. I would. Tell her, and make her believe it.”

Countess, please believe me when I say I wish I didn’t have to write to you with this news. I know your acquaintance with Anatole was painful. So was mine—in its way. I hate to remind you of it.

But I promised him I’d tell you. I’m a soldier, which means I’m cruel in many ways. I’ve never been cruel enough to deny Anatole Kuragin anything.

I loved him, and should have told him so every day I knew him.

He deserved better from us, Countess, and we deserved better from him.

— Captain Fyodor Ivanovich Dolokhov

#

The letters, sent by military courier, arrived in Moscow the following morning.

Hélène didn’t need to break the seal to know what was inside. When she saw the courier in his filthy uniform and Dolokhov’s familiar scrawled handwriting on the outside of the letter, she knew. She knew on sight.

She screamed.

Startled by the sound, Pierre rushed downstairs from his study. He stared, eyes wide, still in his dressing gown. He tried to take Hélène in his arms, to comfort her as best he could. She shoved him aside and sank to the floor.

Screaming, still screaming, as though she would never stop.

She felt nothing, heard nothing, saw nothing, not at first. It wasn’t possible. Not Anatole. Not her brother. Her brother _was_ life, he didn’t know how to do anything else but be alive, more alive than anyone else, too alive for his own good. Anatole dead was not-Anatole, and not-Anatole was no one.

“Hélène,” Pierre murmured, and sat down beside her on the floor.

The door was still open, though the messenger had left. A rush of cold air swept through the entry hall of the Bezukhovs’ home. Pierre shivered. Hélène barely seemed to notice.

“Hélène, what’s happened?” Pierre asked.

Hélène opened her mouth to speak, but the scream had taken the rest of her words. Without thinking, she flung her arms around Pierre—this man she hated, the closest person at hand—and sobbed into his shoulder.

She felt him stiffen in surprise at first, but only for a moment. Then he held her, not understanding her grief, not knowing the cause. Trying his best. Coming nowhere close to good enough.

“It’s all right,” Pierre said, still holding her close. “I’m sorry…”

“It isn’t,” she said, finding her voice through the tears. The words were muffled into his shoulder. “It isn’t all right, and you aren’t sorry. You’d have done it yourself.”

“I’d have done what?”

She pushed him aside, as if realizing what she’d done, and shoved the longer letter into his hand. Pierre nudged his spectacles down his nose, squinting at the words. Hélène saw in his eyes the moment he knew. She watched, for his reaction. Satisfaction, or horror, or a faint whispering pride.

What she saw in her husband’s eyes was shame.

She hated that shame more than anything else.

“Dolokhov,” Pierre said under his breath. “They were…”

“That’s what matters to you?” Hélène said. She stood up, snatching the letter out of Pierre’s grasp. He stared at her, wide-eyed like a startled animal. She wanted to howl. She wanted to spit in his face. “Toto is dead, Pierre. He’s dead, my brother is dead, he’s—”

She was repeating herself. She couldn’t stop. The words meant nothing. They dug claws into her, whispering for her to believe, but she couldn’t, they weren’t—

“Hélène,” Pierre said, and stood, as if to embrace her again.

Hélène turned her back on Pierre and left the room.

She shut herself in the bedroom, locked the door, and did not emerge for three days. Pierre, quiet and cautious, slept badly on the sofa.

When she re-entered the house, Hélène sent a messenger to the army outpost outside the city, demanding that Dolokhov come to Moscow. She had to speak with him, she had to hear it from his own mouth before she would believe it. It would hurt him, that conversation. She remembered the look in Fedya’s eyes when he’d learned of the intended elopement. She hadn’t thought he’d survive news like that, let alone—let alone news like this.

The messenger set off that morning.

He was back by night, alone.

Captain Dolokhov’s regiment had already decamped from the outpost, he said. All of them had. No one could tell him where. Nothing remained of the outpost but a wreck of stirred-up mud and the smoking corpses of campfires.

Beyond the camp, the messenger said to Hélène, he had seen the blur of torchlight and gleaming cannons lighting the horizon. The French army marched on Moscow.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [I Didn't Say I Could Forgive](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12809940) by [orphan_account](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account)




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